if the Tribunal had jurisdiction, whether the Award discloses an error of law in that the Tribunal disregarded the binding contract governing the parties' relationship and failed to construe the Act together with the general law of contract. [20] The first is logically anterior, for if the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction the remaining issues arise only as alternatives. I take them in that order, after first identifying the principles that govern this Court's intervention. [21] It is settled, and was not seriously in dispute, that judicial review is not an appeal. The Court does not re-hear the dispute or substitute its own view of the facts for that of the tribunal entrusted with deciding them. In Ketua Pengarah Hasil Dalam Negeri v Alcatel-Lucent Malaysia Sdn Bhd & Anor [2017] 2 CLJ 1 (FC), the Federal Court affirmed that the supervisory court is concerned with the lawfulness of the decision-making process, and does not reassess the evidence or usurp the functions of the designated authority. [22] That principle is not confined to matters of pure procedure. In R Rama Chandran v The Industrial Court of Malaysia & Anor [1997] 1 CLJ 147; [1997] 1 MLJ 145 (FC), the Federal Court recognised that an award may be reviewed for substance as well as for process, on the grounds of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety; and that approach was re-emphasised in Akira Sales & Services (M) Sdn Bhd v Nadiah Zee Abdullah & Another Appeal [2018] 2 CLJ 513; [2018] 2 MLJ 537 (FC). As I observed in Jun Cheng Development Sdn Bhd v Tribunal Tuntutan Pembeli Rumah & Ors [2026] MLRHU 627 (HC), supervisory review remains supervisory, but it may reach the substance of a decision where legality, rationality or procedural fairness is genuinely in issue, including where the flaw is revealed through the tribunal's handling of the facts. What it does not permit is an unrestricted rehearing on the merits. [23] The content of an error of law was described in Syarikat Kenderaan Melayu Kelantan Bhd v Transport Workers' Union [1995] 1 MLRA 268 (CA), where the Court of Appeal held that such an error is disclosed if the decision-maker asks the wrong question, takes into account irrelevant considerations, omits to take into account relevant considerations what may conveniently be termed an Anisminic error or misconstrues the statute under which it acts. These formulations frame the enquiry that follows. [24] Two further matters of restraint must be kept in view. First, certiorari is a discretionary remedy; not every error attracts it, and it issues only where the error has occasioned injustice in a broad and general sense: Hazlinda Hamzah v Kumon Method of Learning Centre [2006] 1 MLRA 624 (CA), applying Hoh Kiang Ngan v Mahkamah Perusahaan Malaysia & Anor [1995] 3 MLJ 369; [1996] 4 CLJ 687 (FC). Secondly, the Consumer Protection Act 1999 is remedial legislation, enacted to afford consumers speedy and inexpensive redress, and a tribunal constituted under it is not to have its awards struck down save where a genuine reviewable error is shown. I bear both considerations in mind throughout. [25] The Tribunal's jurisdiction is statutory and circumscribed. By section 98 of the Act, read with sections 97 and 99, the Tribunal has jurisdiction to hear a claim only where it is brought by a "consumer" and the sum sought does not exceed the statutory limit. That the claim is by a consumer is therefore a precondition to jurisdiction, not merely an element of the merits. That precondition must, however, be understood with care. In Su Tiang Joo v Tribunal for Consumer Claims & Anor [2021] 1 MLJ 411 the Court of Appeal held that a late objection to a claimant's locus standi, taken by a party which had itself participated fully in the proceedings before the Tribunal, did not pertain to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and was in any event met by estoppel. The appellant there was a consumer of the goods in question, and that status was the foundation of the Tribunal's competence rather than an obstacle to it. The distinction, which is material here, is between the subject-matter jurisdiction of the Tribunal whether what is before it is a consumer claim at all and the locus standi of a particular party to bring or to resist the claim. The objection in the present case is of the former kind: it goes not to the standing of a participant but to whether the claim was, in substance, a claim by a consumer within the meaning of the Act. If the second respondent was not a consumer, there was no consumer claim for the Tribunal to entertain, and the Award cannot stand. [26] "Consumer" is defined in section 3 of the Act as a person who acquires or uses goods or services of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic or household purpose, use or consumption, and who does not do so primarily for the purposes there excluded. The controlling words are "a person who acquires or uses". Where the words of a statute are plain and unambiguous, the court is bound to give effect to their ordinary and natural meaning: Ex p Guan Teik Sdn Bhd (Substituting Lim Oo Guan, Deceased) [2010] 4 CLJ 289 (FC). So read, and consistently with the ordinary sense of the word, a "consumer" is the person who himself acquires or uses the goods or services for personal, domestic or household use. The phrase "personal, domestic or household" qualifies the kind of goods or services; it does not enlarge the class of persons who may claim. The statutory question is therefore not whether the services were of a domestic character the construction of a dwelling plainly is but who acquired or used them. [27] On that question the documentary record before the Tribunal pointed one way. The quotation was addressed to and signed by Maheasan. The three invoices were addressed to Maheasan and acknowledged by him as paid. In his evidence on 25 March 2025 Maheasan confirmed that he engaged the applicant, that he made the three payments, and that the house being built was his own ("rumah yang bikin tu saya punya"), the Land alone belonging to his father. His evidence was also that it was he who terminated the applicant's services. On this material it was Maheasan, and not the second respondent, who acquired and used the applicant's services. [28] The Tribunal did not find otherwise on the facts. Its route to the conclusion that the second respondent was a consumer lay through paragraphs 45 to 47 of its grounds: that father and son constituted one and the same household by reason of their relationship, and that the second respondent was on that footing a consumer. With respect, that reasoning misdirects itself in law. The existence of a familial or household relationship between the claimant and the person who in fact acquired the services is not the statutory test. Section 3 asks who acquired or used the services; it does not deem every member of an acquirer's household to be a consumer. To treat the relationship as sufficient was to ask the wrong question, and to take into account a consideration the statute does not make material — the very kind of error described in Syarikat Kenderaan Melayu Kelantan (above). I add that the factual premise of the Tribunal's reasoning was itself open to question. The applicant placed before the Tribunal evidence that the second respondent and Maheasan resided at different addresses Maheasan at No.2, Jalan Belatok Mas 6, and the second respondent at No.12, Jalan 4, Taman Belatuk Mas so that, on the applicant's case, they did not in fact form a single household. It is unnecessary to resolve that dispute of fact, for even on the footing most favourable to the second respondent a shared household could not, as a matter of law, make him a person who acquired or used the services. [29] I have not overlooked the proper insistence that the Act be construed liberally in favour of consumers. But a liberal construction operates upon the remedial and procedural provisions of the Act; it cannot rewrite the definition of the very class the Act protects. To extend "consumer" to a landowning parent merely because the acquirer of the services is his son would not be liberal construction but the creation of a new category of claimant unsupported by the statutory language. [30] The same body of evidence bears upon the related contention of privity. The contractual nexus disclosed by the quotation and the invoices was between the applicant and Maheasan. On the doctrine of privity, only a party to a contract may sue upon it: Suwiri Sdn Bhd v Government of the State of Sabah [2008] 1 MLJ 743 (FC). The second respondent, not being a party, would have no right of action at common law; and section 2(4) of the Act preserves, rather than displaces, the general law of contract. The Tribunal's jurisdiction turns on the statutory definition of "consumer" rather than on privity as such, but the absence of any contractual relationship between the applicant and the second respondent reinforces the conclusion that he was not the person who acquired the services. Two answers advanced for the second respondent must be addressed. The first is that he was in truth the principal behind the transaction that he proposed and funded the project and directed his son throughout, Maheasan acting merely as his representative by reason of his age and infirmity. The difficulty is that this was not the case before the Tribunal. The notes of evidence record Maheasan giving evidence as to his own dealings, in his own right; at no point did he say that he acted upon his father's instructions, or that the moneys paid were his father's, and no evidence of any payment by the second respondent was produced. The narrative of agency and funding appears for the first time in the second respondent's affidavit in reply in these proceedings. The validity of the Award falls to be tested upon the material that was before the Tribunal when it was made, and a party may not sustain a decision by recasting its factual foundation after the event: Dhayalan Subramaniam v Diebold Nixdorf Sdn Bhd [2026] MLRHU 779 (HC). The letter of authority that was before the Tribunal authorised Maheasan to represent his father at the hearing under section 108 of the Act; it did not establish that the second respondent, rather than Maheasan, had acquired the services. Representation at a hearing and acquisition of services are distinct, and the former cannot supply the latter. [32] The second answer is that the privity objection was not pleaded in Form 2, and that it is not for a court to invent an unpleaded defence: Sipadan Dive Centre Sdn Bhd & Ors v The State Government of the State of Sabah [2010] 2 MLRH 500 (HC). That answer does not meet the point. Whether the second respondent was a consumer is not a private defence to be pleaded or waived; it is the statutory precondition to the Tribunal's jurisdiction. A want of jurisdiction cannot be conferred by consent, nor cured by a failure to plead, nor met by an estoppel. That a jurisdictional objection to a consumer claims tribunal may be taken at any stage was affirmed in Fair Hill Property Sdn Bhd v Ngui Cheng Yew & Anor [2014] MLRHU 134 (HC). In any event the objection was not first taken in this Court: the applicant placed the absence of privity before the Tribunal in her Bundle of Documents with Explanation on 7 May 2025, and the Tribunal addressed the consumer question on its merits at paragraphs 45 to 47 of its grounds. The principle that a court will not create an unpleaded case has no application where the point is one of jurisdiction the tribunal was bound to consider. Nor is this approach inconsistent with Su Tiang Joo: the estoppel there operated upon an objection to a party's locus standi, which the Court of Appeal held to be non-jurisdictional, and not upon the anterior question whether the matter was a consumer claim at all, which is the question that arises here. One further complaint under the head of illegality should be noticed. By paragraph 6(g) of her amended statement the applicant contended that the Award was irregular because it was made in favour of the second respondent although he did not personally attend the hearing, contrary to regulation 21(1) of the Consumer Protection (The Tribunal for Consumer Claims) Regulations 1999. That contention does not assist her. The claim was prosecuted throughout by Maheasan as the second respondent's authorised representative under section 108 of the Act, who attended every hearing and gave evidence, so that the second respondent was before the Tribunal by his representative. In any event the point is immaterial to the result, the want of jurisdiction having been established on the anterior ground already stated. [33] It follows that the Tribunal's conclusion that the second respondent was a consumer rested upon an error of law going to its jurisdiction. The second respondent not having been shown to be a person who acquired or used the applicant's services, the Tribunal had no jurisdiction under section 98 to entertain his claim. That conclusion suffices to dispose of the application. Because the remaining grounds were fully argued, and lest I be wrong on the first, I address the second, third and fourth grounds in turn, each as an alternative and contingent basis upon which, were jurisdiction assumed, the Award would in any event fall. [34] Were it necessary to go further, the challenge on the ground of irrationality would also succeed, and I explain why, while bearing firmly in mind that judicial review is not an appeal. The complaint is not that the Tribunal preferred one quantity surveyor's report over another. Had that been the complaint, it would merely concern the weight to be attached to competing evidence, a matter entrusted to the Tribunal and not ordinarily open to reconsideration on judicial review. As the Court of Appeal observed in Menara PanGlobal Sdn Bhd v Ariokianathan Sivapiragasam [2006] 3 MLJ 493; [2006] 2 CLJ 501, the weighing and assessment of evidence are functions of the tribunal, and the High Court will not interfere merely because it might have reached a different factual conclusion. The complaint here is of an altogether different character. It concerns not the Tribunal's preference between competing opinions, but the manner in which that preference was reached. The Tribunal accepted the Respondent's QS Report without addressing material defects apparent on the face of the report and without engaging with material evidence which directly challenged its reliability. That is not an error in the weighing of evidence. It is a failure to take into account relevant considerations and to grapple with matters going to the rationality of the decision-making process itself. [35] First, the Tribunal relied upon the second respondent's report to the exclusion of all else. Its grounds record, at paragraph 21, that it relied fully ("bergantung penuh") upon that report in making the Award, and the notes of evidence record the President stating, more than once, that in the absence of a competing report he would simply follow it. The Award discloses no other reason for the figure arrived at. Secondly, the report so relied upon was internally inconsistent. It stated, at its outset, that its purpose was to value the work that had been carried out at the site. Its conclusion, however, did not value the completed work at all. It valued the balance of work said to be outstanding at RM150,017.00, and then derived the value of the completed work by subtracting that balance from the contract sum, yielding RM118,983.00. The figure for completed work the very figure on which the alleged overpayment depended was thus not an assessment but an arithmetical residue, resting on the assumption that the work outstanding had been correctly and exhaustively valued. The applicant urged a related weakness: that the report was compiled upon information supplied by the second respondent, who was a stranger to the dealings between the applicant and Maheasan and had no direct knowledge of the works. That the source of the report's factual premises was a person not party to the transaction is a matter going to the weight the Tribunal could safely place upon it, and reinforces the difficulty of adopting it without more. [37] Thirdly, the report took the sum paid as RM165,750.00. The sum actually paid, on the three invoices and on Maheasan's own evidence, was RM165,250.00. Even on the report's own method, the correct figure would have yielded an overpayment of RM46,267.00, not RM46,767.00. The discrepancy of RM500.00 is not large, but it is symptomatic: the Tribunal adopted the report's conclusion whole, including a figure unsupported by the very payment records before it. The applicant's own amended statement acknowledges that the correct figure on the report's method would be RM46,267.00. [38] Fourthly, in adopting the report the Tribunal left out of account material bearing directly on the value of the completed work. The applicant's Bundle of Documents with Explanation of 25 March 2025 exhibited invoices, vouchers, receipts and bank slips said to evidence construction costs of RM164,292.96. Maheasan's own evidence on 25 March 2025 was that another contractor he had consulted considered that the applicant had done more work than the payments made. And the applicant's report valued the completed work at RM169,740.03. None of this was weighed against the second respondent's report; the latter was simply adopted. [39] Taken together, these features carry the Award beyond a permissible preference of one body of evidence over another. A conclusion reached by the wholesale adoption of a single report that is internally inconsistent, that carries an arithmetical error into the operative award, and that is not measured against the competing material before the tribunal, is one that no tribunal properly directing itself could reasonably have reached on that material; it is, in the language of the authorities, irrational, and discloses an error of law in the failure to take relevant considerations into account. That such a failure is reviewable, even under the Consumer Protection Act 1999, is illustrated by Agensi Pekerjaan Kenangan Eksklusif (M) Sdn Bhd v Chin Kok Leong & Anor [2021] MLRHU 846 (HC), where an award founded solely on the consumer's version, without regard to the terms binding the parties, was quashed as Wednesbury unreasonable. That same decision reaffirms that the corrective jurisdiction is exercised only upon clear error; for the reasons given, this is such a case. [40] I record, for completeness, the contention that the Tribunal acted consistently with its practice of relying upon a quantity surveyor's report and with the Act's objective of speedy and inexpensive justice. That objective is real and I give it weight. But expedition does not licence a tribunal to adopt a flawed report without regard to the other material before it. Speed and fairness are not opposed; the Act requires both. [41] The third ground is that, having itself directed the applicant to procure a report, the Tribunal acted unfairly in rejecting that report on matters of form the want of a covering letter, the position of the chop, and an uncountersigned correction to a date without resort to its power under section 110 of the Act to summon the surveyor, whose contact details the applicant had offered, to address those very matters. [42] The grounds on which the applicant's report was rejected were matters of form alone, and none touched the substance or the reliability of the valuation it contained. A covering letter is a matter of transmittal; the placing of the surveyor's registration chop beneath rather than beside the signature does not impeach the authorship of the report; and an uncountersigned manuscript correction to the stop-work date goes, at most, to a peripheral particular and not to the measurement of the works. Whatever misgivings such irregularities might invite, each was readily curable had the maker of the report been asked to account for it. [43] The significance of that lies in the character of the Tribunal. It is not an adversarial court bound by the strict rules of evidence, but an inquisitorial body charged with delivering fair and speedy justice to the parties before it, and it is equipped with power under section 110 of the Act to summon any person to give evidence or to produce documents. Having itself directed the applicant to obtain the report, the Tribunal could, and in fairness ought to, have exercised that power to summon the surveyor — whose contact details the applicant had offered for that very purpose — so that the objections of form might be answered before the report was cast aside. To reject the report unheard, upon form alone, while accepting the opposing report and relying upon it to the exclusion of all else, was to deny the applicant any real opportunity to be heard upon the single question that decided the case. That is a denial of natural justice; it is procedural impropriety in the sense recognised in R Rama Chandran (above), a self-standing ground of review for which, as Sheila Sangar v Proton Edar Sdn Bhd & Anor [2008] 4 MLRH 278 confirms, no investigation of the merits is required. [44] The unfairness was material. The rejected report was the applicant's only answer to the valuation upon which the Award rests; its summary exclusion was no neutral incident of case management, but went to the heart of the dispute, and left the Tribunal with a single, unanswered figure which it then adopted whole. A tribunal constituted under the Act must adhere to the acceptable standards of administrative law and justice: Hello Holidays Sdn Bhd v Phang Lai Sim [2014] 1 MLRH 7. The course taken here did not meet them. I find, accordingly, that the Award was in addition reached in breach of the rules of natural justice. [45] The fourth ground may be taken shortly, for it follows from the nature of the claim. The Consumer Protection Act 1999 does not displace the general law of contract; it operates alongside it. Section 2(4) provides that the application of the Act is supplemental in nature and without prejudice to any other law regulating contractual relations, and in Su Tiang Joo (above) the Court of Appeal held that the provisions of the Act are to be read in tandem with the Contracts Act 1950 and the Sale of Goods Act 1957, so that a tribunal which adjudicates a consumer claim must keep within the law so read. Where the parties' relationship is governed by a contract, the measure of their respective rights is in the first place contractual; the implied guarantees of the Act supplement that measure, but do not supplant it. Here the parties' relationship was governed by the quotation QT-00058 which, as I have found, was the only contractual document, together with the variations instructed by Maheasan. The second respondent's claim was, in substance, that he had overpaid for the works. Whether there had been any overpayment could not be answered without reference to the contractual measure — the agreed price, the variations to it, and the value of the work in fact done against that price. The Tribunal addressed none of this. It adopted a report that derived an "overpayment" by deducting an unvalued balance of work from the bare contract sum, and it did so without regard to the quotation, to the instructed variations (which the applicant's report valued at RM21,750.00), or to the applicant's contractual entitlement to be paid for the work she had performed. The contract that defined the parties' rights was passed over. On the applicant's report, indeed, the contractual measure pointed the other way: with the variations the contract sum became RM290,750.00, the work done as at termination was valued at RM169,740.03, and against the RM165,250.00 paid a balance of RM4,490.03 remained owing to the applicant, who says she was in addition prevented from removing equipment and materials valued at RM12,734.00 from the site. Whether or not those figures are accepted, they demonstrate that the contractual measure could not simply be left out of account, as it was. [47] That is the very error for which the award in Agensi Pekerjaan Kenangan Eksklusif was set aside. I have referred to that decision already, at [39], in the context of irrationality; it bears more directly upon the present ground. There a consumer claims tribunal applied the implied guarantees of the Act and ordered a refund while leaving out of account the binding agreement and its terms, and the High Court held that to adjudicate the claim without regard to the contract was a clear and material error of law, rendering the award Wednesbury unreasonable. The court reaffirmed, on the authority of Hean Sang Sdn Bhd v Kompleks Yik Foong Management Corporation [2015] 3 MLRH 485, that it is not for a tribunal to remake the contract the parties have made for themselves, but to interpret and apply it. The present case stands on the same footing. By resolving the claim upon the measure of the Act alone, and disregarding the contract that governed the parties, the Tribunal misdirected itself in law. This is a further and independent basis upon which, had the Tribunal possessed jurisdiction, the Award would fall. [48] The first respondent had no jurisdiction to entertain the second respondent's claim, the second respondent not having been shown to be a "consumer" within section 3 of the Consumer Protection Act 1999. That is determinative. Were jurisdiction nonetheless assumed, the Award is in any event irrational, was reached in breach of the rules of natural justice, and discloses a reviewable error of law both in the manner already described and in the Tribunal's disregard of the binding contract that governed the parties. In each case the error has occasioned a substantial injustice a monetary award against a person over whom the Tribunal had no jurisdiction, upon a valuation that the Tribunal's own chosen source did not support so that the discretion to grant certiorari is properly exercised. The second, third and fourth grounds are each an independent and sufficient basis for relief, decided in the alternative against the possibility of error on the first. [49] For these reasons I make the following orders: