Consumer Complaints – Making Yourself Heard

June 28th, 2010

Have you ever failed to receive a rebate or had a bad customer service experience? Did you feel powerless to do anything, or that you had no recourse to recover your loss? Now, thanks to the Internet, consumers have a number of options to discuss the incidents, seek advice, or just vent about their problems.

First, contact the company

When you’ve had a bad experience with a company and gotten no response from customer support, you should start by contacting the company directly, either by calling them or writing a letter or email. Contact information can usually be found online at sites like GetHuman or by searching Google for the company. If you choose to call them, you should ask for the CEO/President’s office. You’ll most likely be transferred to an “executive complaints” office instead, where you’ll get better assistance than the normal low-level “customer support” can give you. A complaint letter sent directly to the company can also be very effective if you include copies of all supporting documentation; this can usually produce some action in your favor. A sample complaint letter and email can be found on the Consumer Action website.

What to do next

If contacting the company directly doesn’t produce the desired results, here are other agencies you can contact.

1. Contact your state’s Attorney General or Consumer Protection Offices. You can also direct your complaint to the appropriate federal agencies and national consumer organizations found on this list or consumer protection sites listed by state.
2. Contact the Better Business Bureau to file your own complaint, or review complaints against companies you are considering doing business with.
3. Send details of your problem to the Federal Trade Commission. While the FTC doesn’t resolve individual consumer complaints, the collective body of complaints can help the FTC detect patterns of wrong-doing, and lead to investigations and prosecutions. Complaints on this site become part of Consumer Sentinel, a secure online database that is used by thousands of civil and criminal law enforcement authorities worldwide.
4. Report or check for instances of online fraud at The National Fraud Information Center and Internet Fraud Watch. This site provides a place for those who have been targeted to file a formal complaint, and also lists information about current internet scams.
5. Post on public complaint sites. Many rebate issues have been posted at RipoffReport and ComplaintsBoard, where you can submit your complaints and also search a database of recalls. MeasuredUp acts as an intermediary between the consumer and the companies; businesses like Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Orbitz and Best Buy have signed up with MeasuredUp to respond to consumer complaints right there on the site. Posting your complaint on this site is a way to avoid talking to representatives on the phone and still reach the company. There are thousands of positive posts on this site, as well as links to other resources. PlanetFeedback is another site that encourages dialog by posting complaint letters with company responses. Visitors can search company profiles or use the letter generator to add details of their own experience. Three more active complaint sites include Complaints, My3Cents, and PissedConsumer.

While online complaint sites can’t actually promise any resolution for consumer complaints, it’s clear that many businesses are beginning to take them seriously. If you post the details of your experience on a complaint website, make sure it’s a clear and factual account, avoiding any angry or slanderous comments. This can also increase the effectiveness of your email or letter to the company, especially when you direct them to the URL of your complaint post. The net result is that, at the very least, these sites provide a forum for consumers to vent their frustration. And the biggest value of these posted experiences may serve to alert others and help them avoid similar problems. If, based on this information, future customers avoid doing business with companies that fail to resolve complaints satifactorily, the influence of consumer complaints online becomes a powerful force indeed.

Entry Filed under: Shopping