This is going to be a rather silly post, but it’s on a topic that I’ve been meaning to write about for a long time.
We all know that it’s frustratingly hard to get good customer service from service providers. The telephone company, the cable company, that company that you bought your motherboard from; the list goes on and on. Then there are the companies that use deceptive marketing to convince you to buy something, and then it turns out that the product is totally unsupported. There is a lot of bad customer service out there, and I’ve always believed that consumers have a right to fight back.
Let me start by saying that you should never do anything illegal. No matter what a company has done to you, you don’t have a right vandalize or sabotage them. If you’re going to go public with your complaints, state only the facts, otherwise it’s defamation or libel. Also, be sure that you have evidence to defend your claims, because big corporations can and do sue for libel when customers dare to tell the truth about them.
Customers have the right to tell the truth about companies that have ripped them off, and you can be creative about how and where you tell the truth. Tell the truth in the store, loudly but without yelling, so that other customers can overhear you. Write to the consumer advocate at your local newspaper or news channel. Post in their forum, or the forum of a popular fan site. Blog about it. Start a petition. Spread the word, but do it legally!
So, I’ve received some spectacularly bad service from three different companies in the past few days, but I’m going to write about one that may not seem like such a big deal. You see, I like pudding. Try to guess where this is going. (more…)