Things you can do that will work ...
Another long time b3ta lurker here!

I have recently had two reasons to complain about products/service and I got success with both, so I thought I'd share this:


1. Trekking in a jungle 7,000 miles from blighty my brand new DSLR camera stopped working. When I got back home I angrily called the online company I purchased it from, whereupon they said that it was up to the manufacturer to issue a refund and refused to discuss the issue further.

I then rang the manufacturer and was given a little gem: All products in the UK are covered for 6 years against manufacturing defect! I wrote a polite letter to the online company making reference to Sale of Goods Act 1979, Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994, The Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002 ... and they immediately gave me the option of having a full refund or replacement model.

Further reading: www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/fact-sheets/page38311.html

2. I was experiencing quite crappy signal quality from my mobile phone service provider. Previously I'd had perfect signal quality, but for weeks it had been poor. Endless calls to the useless customer support line failed to produce a result, so I wrote to the CEO.

Sounds crazy, but their email addresses are easily obtained (www.connectotel.com/marcus/ceoemail.html). I was called within 2 hours by someone from their management team, who assured me that they were looking into it. Three days later, the signal quality was perfect and I even got a follow up call a week later to check that everything was ok!

So ... complaining in this manner is not quite as fun as faxing a kitchen roll to an ISP support line (another story), but its worth doing. If you're going to complain, keep it short, professional and minimise the rant.

Happy complaining! :)
(osmium, Sun 5 Sep 2010, 22:34, 7 replies)

Yeah, but...
...we want to know about the faxed kitchen roll.
(Mork, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 9:23, closed)

About 8 years ago, I got a contract with an ISP. My account wasn't setup at all correctly and ended up having my bank account regularly raped by their direct debit system. Following endless lengthy calls to the premium rate support line, I managed to obtain a fax number to write a letter of complaint.

As my sternly worded letter was going though, I had the bright idea to apply a piece of sellotape to each end, and then let it run for 5 minutes or so. The next day I received a call saying something along the lines of "please don't do that again", at which point I said I would give them 3 days to resolve the issue.

After a week, the issue hadn't been resolved, and I couldn't be bothered to write another letter, so I just faxed a nice patterned kitchen roll to them (I think it might have had teddy bears on it), occasionally scribbling messages like "your company is shit" and "don't worry, I'm closing my account" and unhappy cartoon faces. Considering that this was in the days of fax rolls, they should have received a nice 100m long surprise in the morning...
(osmium, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 14:33, closed)

Why, thank you.
How sad that no one uses fax machines any more...
(Mork, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 17:41, closed)

me and my sisters
are forever talking about the sale of goods act, thanks for the linkage!
(dragondracus, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 10:30, closed)

You're very welcome! I just hate the fact that I was totally ignorant to this legislation and have ended up shelling out money for totally unnecessary "extended warranties" on items.
(osmium, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 14:36, closed)

Trekking in the jungle with a nice shiney DSLR
Did you pack it correctly?
The jungle is very humid, the use of silica bags and waterproof packing is highly recommended.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 11:14, closed)

Absolutely! I made sure to stick with one lens to avoid getting humid air into the internal bits and was careful to keep it in the camera bag when it wasn't being used. Everyone else on the tour were quite happily snapping away at the wildlife with their fully functioning DSLR's without any worries (bastards)
(osmium, Mon 6 Sep 2010, 14:17, closed)