» Complaining

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! :)
(Sun 5th Sep 2010, 22:34, More)