Customer Complaints: Do you make them?

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

The last two months I have been going through a refinance of my mortgage.  It has been a comedy of errors that ended with a closing/settlement that ended at 11:40 pm last night (It was supposed to start at 7:30, but didn't until 10:30). Long story short, there have been unnecessary delays, a lack of communication and multiple errors in the fee schedules (including the ones we signed at closing).

I have written a rather long letter to the loan officer I was working with, and his manager, detailing why I chose their company (good stuff) and then the continuous problems we've had since making that choice.  I don't really want to make an official complaint, I just want them to know what went wrong, and how I feel, hoping it will improve the process for other down the line.

 

So have you ever made such complaints to a company?  Did you complain to the person you dealt with (either officially, or unofficially), or did you file an official complaint with the company headquarters? What were the results? Did it help? Did anything change? What was your experience like?

 

(Obviously, I don't file complaints much, not sure if I ever had before, and even this one is not really an "official" complaint)

[sologdin]

i've got a great reserved parking spot at work--third floor of the deck, adjacent to stairwell.  it's plainly labelled as reserved, but nevertheless sometimes assholes park therein.  i don't ever complain, and just park elsewhere, as the deck operator immobilizes unauthorized vehicles in reserved spots, which is perhaps excessive and counterproductive (i want them out of the spot, not locked in).

except for one time, gauche suburban assault vehicle expropriated my spot bearing a who is john galt? bumper sticker.  motherfucker accordingly was immobilized via my complaint because of the galling inconsistency between decrying moral cannibals by adolescent ersatz philosophy on the one hand and simultaneously being an adolescent moral cannibal in ruthlessly taking the unearned on the other.

[Hereward]

I'm British, therefore I don't understand the question.

[Fez]

I'll often complain in-person/over-the-phone as necessary. If that's not working and I feel the situation is justified, I go directly to the Better Business Bureau. The BBB has no actual authority, its a non-profit that businesses support on a voluntary basis, but most companies take those complaints seriously.

I was having an issue with Verizon that I contacted the BBB about and within 24 hours some executive customer assistance hotline called me and within a week I had a letter of apology from the Vice President of something or other at Verizon, a refund check, and they took the other actions I requested. 

I can't recommend enough going that route, but only if your complaint really is legitimate and serious.

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, sologdin said:

i've got a great reserved parking spot at work--third floor of the deck, adjacent to stairwell.  it's plainly labelled as reserved, but nevertheless sometimes assholes park therein.  i don't ever complain, and just park elsewhere, as the deck operator immobilizes unauthorized vehicles in reserved spots, which is perhaps excessive and counterproductive (i want them out of the spot, not locked in).

except for one time, gauche suburban assault vehicle expropriated my spot bearing a who is john galt? bumper sticker.  motherfucker accordingly was immobilized via my complaint because of the galling inconsistency between decrying moral cannibals by adolescent ersatz philosophy on the one hand and simultaneously being an adolescent moral cannibal in ruthlessly taking the unearned on the other.

Good one. If you want to get away with shit, don't advertise as to how much of a shit you are.

 

[Mexal]

My gf and Dad send in letters of complaint all the time if something they expected isn't the way it's expected. Or sometimes my gf calls. She's always polite and always asks for some kind of compensation. You won't get anything back if you don't ask.

[Kalbear]

Yes. I do. And they're awesome.

• When I was buying my first home I was trying to deal with a bunch of unpaid bills that had gone to collections that I was unaware of. I found one collection agency, paid them, and needed to get a receipt - which they refused to do. So I talked to their manager for a while, who also refused. I point blank told him as a customer I am entitled to a receipt, and that failure to provide one is illegal - and more importantly I'd contact the BBB. (he amusingly threatened me with contacting the BBB against me). 
  I got the receipt the next day after contacting BBB. 
• Earlier this week we brought our son's iPad in for repair. It took longer than I expected, and when we got it back we found out that all the sound and bluetooth were completely broken. I just went and bought a new one because I didn't want to deal with them again. I then wrote a review indicating the bad experience, and within 15 minutes of the review they called me, emailed me, and offered to reimburse me for the iPad I bought.
• Earlier this year we were at a hotel and I reviewed it. The hotel was fine, but the room was not - the curtains didn't raise, the bath didn't have a stopper, the AC leaked, the refridgerator door was falling off, and the pool was out of order too. They gave us a bunch of credit in response. 

[all swedes are racist]

As someone who works customer service, I almost never make complaints (about employees that is), and if I do it's gotta be some truly heinous shit. 

@Lany Freelove Cassandra, I also must say I truly appreciate the way you handled your complaint. As a manager as well as a customer service-er(?) I see a customers negative feedback as important tools to address and correct shortcomings; they should be learning experiences. Including what they did right as well as what went wrong not only (should) make them much more receptive and again, help to illustrate how they could prevent such failures in the future. 

[aceluby]

I have made only one serious complaint.  It was at a restaurant that I went to about once a week.  Had a beer w/ friends, ordered food, then as the food came I ordered a second beer to have with my meal.  I finished my first one half way through the meal and saw my beer sitting on the bar, waiting for the waitress to come pick it up.  I ended up finishing my meal over the course of the next 10-15 minutes at which point the waitress came over with my beer.  I told her I no longer wanted it as I wanted to drink it with my meal, which was now done and I didn't want everyone to wait for me as I finish it.  She was extremely rude, but ended up taking it back.  We left a 10% tip and as we were walking out the door she yelled back at us "Thanks A LOT!".  I called over the manager, told him that this was the worst service I had ever had there, I come there all the time, and that she was extremely rude.  I ended up getting my meal comped and my next, but I think it was at the cost of her job.  I still feel kind of bad about that....

[The Wedge]

I had a terrible experience with a national floral delivery company this past Mother's Day.  I ordered the bouquet the previous Monday for a Friday delivery so Mom could enjoy the flowers all weekend.  Lo and behold, I call Mom on Sunday and she does not mention the flowers.  That's odd.  So I ask if they were delivered.  Well, no.  I called the florist's hotline only to find out why.

Them - Oh, we don't have that bouquet in that region. 

Me - Okay, then, why was I not informed several days earlier? 

Them -Oh, we'll get right on that with a different bouquet.  Is Tuesday okay?

Me - Umm... no, Tuesday is not okay.  Get them there ASAP.  

Them - Oh, looking at our computer, we don't have a florist in that area.

Me- Don't BS me. Other national florists have delivered there with no problems.

Them - Oh, we'll get on it.

So I don't trust this and send an scathing e-mail saying Competitor A and Competitor B have been great in the past and what gives here?  The e-mail reaches a seriously great customer rep who calls me, e-mails me updates, gets a nice bouquet delivered ASAP, and refunds my money.   I'm happy, right?

A month later and it's Mom's birthday.  Okay, let's give this company one more shot.  They deliver on time, but the bouquet is a dud. No blossoms, no accent flowers.  Mom sends me a picture and it's pathetic.  Seriously?  So I skip the hotline and send an e-mail with a pic of the bouquet to the great rep I dealt with in the past.  She immediately gets the ball rolling and less than an hour later my Mom has a beautiful bouquet for her birthday.  Thanks, FTD customer rep lady.

PS - Another great way to get attention is to Twitter about the incident. Big companies often monitor Tweets for this kind of thing and will get in touch right away to rectify the situation.

[HexMachina]

Several times, to the same company (our mobile phone provider,EE). They've all come after faults with our phones, which happens, technology is fallible. What I complained about was the company response/customer service. I was given incorrect information, or had queries ignored completely, had a courier show up at the incorrect address to collect a broken phone even though i provided the correct address (and went through the whole repeat the postcode three times because of my admittedly garbled pronunciation), waited two weeks for a repair that would take "up to five working days", had no follow up phone calls after specifically requesting one because of the hassle I had, had a manager hang up on me mid conversation...(there have been four ocassions where I've had to contact EE and each time there have been at least one issue mentioned above). Complaints usually result in maybe a months free line rental.

Needless to say I'm desperate for the end of my contract

[The Anti-Targ]

I have done from time to time. One that springs to mind is a bit of rubber glove in my chocolate bar. I didn't get much for it, a couple of free boxes of snack bars. Fortunately no rubber glove in those.

[DireWolfSpirit]

My most recent consumer issue was with a sports outfitter. I had purchased some cots and a tent earlier in July.  When I went camping I discovered my Coleman equipment was short some awning poles, also no stakes were included with the tent. Luckily I was able to make the tent sleepable for a few nights by tieing it off between a tree and picnic table. Anyways as soon as I was back home I called the store, who offered a replacement tent but I would have to come in to the nearest store which was about 40 mins away, (I bought the tent out of state while visiting relatives). A quick call to the manafacturer (Colemans) and they agreed to ship a new tent to me, should be arriving any day.

All in all, I feel things were resolved well, instead of driving an hour, the only onus on me was mailing a copy of the reciept. Also the customer service was very reasonable and willing to correct their mistake with zero cajoling necessarry. I even can keep the original tent, so with a few replacement poles and stakes (15-30 bucks), I'll end up with a couple tents, instead of one, over the inconvenience.

I can recommend Coleman camping equipment easily,  based on how they dealt with me (plus the cots are super good quality for camping). 

[Elder Sister]

I almost never complain, but there have been some notable exceptions.  The last one was 6 years ago...I didn't feel like my surgeon gave enough thought or patient care to lymphedema, which is a possible side effect of breast cancer, which I now have.  I wrote letters, I made phone calls, and I even baked him and his nurse a carrot cake.  

He and his office now have a totally different approach to lymphedema, and they do a great job with patient education.  I and my lymphedema therapist helped author a pamphlet that he and his partners now give out to every breast cancer patient.

I'm proud of that complaint.

[Lordsteve666]

I've complained a few times about the utterly crap service I've had to suffer on train journeys from hell but the simply insulting compensation you get and the fact you feel the really don't give a shit puts you off after a while. Thankfully i never use the train nowadays.

I have to suffer on our cities buses most days but my regular driver on the way to work used to quite own not charge people if things were late etc so that was cool. Sad things is though he was probably putting his job at risk each time he did it even though he's having to placate the passengers because the company can't design decent routes, timetables or even supply suitable vehicles.

The only time I ever really had at it with a company was buying some new lighting for our fish tank online. LED lights were pretty new then so the price was not cheap. But we went with them because they would save power, looked awesome and would last for years. Plus the units we chose were made in the UK, hey that's cool, supporting UK manufacturing and all I thought. Well they were delayed endlessly, despite the company taking money from the account the very day the order was placed. I contacted them several times and the final time they came out with some BS about the units still being in China so that's was the delay. I really laid into them here as the whole point of my choosing them was to buy locally made kit, plus the fact their kits was made in the UK was emblazoned all over their website. After I threatened them with legal action for false advertising and then demanded a full refund my lights arrived that same week. Funny how throwing the law about  suddenly gets these companies to change their minds, provided you sound angry enough to follow through with it. 

[MercenaryChef]

I never complain. I do however sometimes have to field complaints from guests in myour restaurant.  

Notable was a Egyptian doctor staying in the hotel who threatened me with police action when he believed he had been served a pork sausage. 

[Which Tyler]

I'm British - of course I don't complain; I can't think of anything more embarrassing - possibly witnessing someone else queue-jumping might get there.

 

The closest I've ever come to complaining is leaving increasingly passive-aggressive notes on someone's windscreen when they parked in my space (as in the 1 and only parking space at my work, not just a reserved space in a car-park) every day for about a fortnight.

In the end, I just let the air out of his tyres*... and felt terrible about myself.

 

 

* not enough to do any damage, just enough to make him top them up again - and left a note saying as much.

[MerenthaClone]

Almost never, because usually my complaints word have a disproportionate effect on someone who probably didn't have anything to do with it.  And the times I've been complained about at my job were so utterly ridiculous and so out of touch with my actual job requirements that i usually assume my complaints would be too.  

The main thing I could see is complaining about a healthcare worker when I KNOW they're doing something wrong, because I'm actually sure that it's their fault and they should know better.  And even then, it'd have to be pretty bad.

[Zoë Sumra]

10 hours ago, Elder Sister said:

I almost never complain, but there have been some notable exceptions.  The last one was 6 years ago...I didn't feel like my surgeon gave enough thought or patient care to lymphedema, which is a possible side effect of breast cancer, which I now have.  I wrote letters, I made phone calls, and I even baked him and his nurse a carrot cake.  

He and his office now have a totally different approach to lymphedema, and they do a great job with patient education.  I and my lymphedema therapist helped author a pamphlet that he and his partners now give out to every breast cancer patient.

I'm proud of that complaint.

This sounds like a great outcome from a bad thing.

A colleague of mine complains a lot and gets many free things as a result.  I rarely do so: the main one I remember making was when a well known broadband and phone provider slammed my account - I found the name of the main customer complaints manager online (rather than using the usual complaints procedure) and wrote him a stinking letter about the company's actions depriving me of internet service and costing me £££ in cancellation charges from my existing provider.  His PA phoned me to find out how big a cheque I wanted.

[Tears of Lys]

12 hours ago, MerenthaClone said:

Almost never, because usually my complaints word have a disproportionate effect on someone who probably didn't have anything to do with it.  And the times I've been complained about at my job were so utterly ridiculous and so out of touch with my actual job requirements that i usually assume my complaints would be too.  

The main thing I could see is complaining about a healthcare worker when I KNOW they're doing something wrong, because I'm actually sure that it's their fault and they should know better.  And even then, it'd have to be pretty bad.

I almost complained about a nurse at an outpatient clinic I went to recently for a minor procedure.  As she was prepping me, etc., I noticed her hands/nails were dirty.   Plus, there were several other somewhat minor things that occurred at the facility that could have been done differently and made the experience more pleasant.

I ended up not saying anything, mostly due to my husband's advising me not to.   I believe the nurse DID wash her hands/nails shortly, so that was rectified. 

I have a real problem complaining about food service, mainly because I'm semi-convinced someone's going to piss/or worse in my food,