How to complain: Email vs Phone vs Post?

kijog

I am interested in what people think about the best method to complain to companies.

In the last few months I have had a few consumer troubles which have cost me a lot of time and effort to solve. What has struck me about dealing with companies is how phone and email is being abused to provide rubbish customer service.

I have come to the conclusion that I should only ever deal with companies by letter as I can't be bothered to make phone calls which cost me money by the minute and never solve the problem. Yes, occasionally, you find a gem in the rough, but not often. Email is even worse. You're left worrying either whether your email has arrived, or if they send a formulaic auto-reply, whether anyone has bothered to read it.

I can't claim the idea is new (my dad send letters to the bank saying 'pay this in please' with a cheque!) but I reckon you get a higher class of customer service idiot answering the post. The impression is that when you write a letter, you have just escalated the whole complaint into the 'serious' category and it shouldn't be used for anything less. But I would say - put pen to paper now! Any thoughts from more experienced consumer warriors than I?

dexters_mum_2

I agree, letters are much more effective in my experience.

With the greater number of outsourced call centres and the generally inability of them to understand the reasons for your complaint, I'd rather post a letter to somewhere in the UK than call a company now.

Also, I HATE ringing 0844, 0845, 0870 numbers (always try to find the generic non premium numbers)

Great post, I'd love to see how others deal with complaints.

Reggie_Rebel

Letters for me also, unless they are local, when super glue in the lock is preferable

Rex_Mundi

I send a letter by preference. I also send these type of letters by recorded or registered post (they have to sign for them, and it doesn't cost a lot extra). This is especially handy if you have to take matters further (County Court etc). They cannot claim they didn't receive your letter.

chuckley

phone, i always get success. i never have to write letters or emails.

moneypooh

I always send complaints by letter. They have served me well, for the time it takes to email I can construct a letter that contains everything I need to explain. The only difference is the price to post.
In the past copule of years I have had substantial refunds and gestures of goodwill. They include a free weekend at Center Parcs, £50 from M&S and about £250 from other companies (some in vouchers).
I even sent Cadbury a wrapper from a whole nut bar (that didn't have any)and received £15 voucher. I had to eat the whole bar to know they weren't any nuts in it so only sent an empty wrapper!!!:T

I find that the letters addressed to department heads always do better than a phone call or general email, but that's been my experience.

kijog

Wow, I'm surprised how much support there is for the letter, although chuckley - if you know the secret to success on the phone then let me know!

I reckon they have to earn the right to deal with people on the phone.

My local council has a call centre which is open 24hrs a day and to give them credit have sorted out any problem I have had with council tax, missing wheelie bins or anything else. So they get dealt with on the phone, they've earnt it.

I had a run in with United Utilities over getting hold of a final water bill (I know, crazy, you have to fight them to pay what you owe). After around 2 months of phone calls getting nowhere, receiving empty promises and information that was simply wrong, I wrote a letter. Result - phone call from their head office three days later, the problem was sorted within the week.

Also, worth noting is United Utilities policy is to pay £25 compensation for each error. My only regret is that I only listed two!!

moonrakerz

1. Try the 'phone first - note time and gist of conversation, ask person for their name.
If you are feeling really p****d off, ask them to make sure that "this call is being recorded".

2. If that doesn't work, write recorded delivery and give them a timescale for a reply, 14 days is usually enough.

3. Don't bother with e-mail.

nickmack

I'd vote for recorded letter.

I have resolved some issues over the phone, but more often than not it's been a frustrating experience.

Off the top of my head, I've been lied to, hung up on deliberately and had broken promises of callbacks on several occassions.

Making a note of the persons name and time/date of call doesn't always seem to be an effective method of recalling what has happened. Not all calls are recorded and sometimes operators do not make the correct notes.

kijog

I think the recorded phone call thing is a red herring. They always put that on the message before the call starts. But having spoken to one of my friends who worked in a mobile phone network call centre they seem to use it more to monitor the call centre people themselves. They have tough targets on how many calls each employee handles every hour, and use recordings to check why certain people's throughput rate has fallen. I.e. because a few have been known to civilly chat with the customer on the phone, a fellow human being, and take the time to understand and then resolve the problem at hand!

I also think recounting the story of how you spoke to 'James' or 'David' on such and such a date in any letter doesn't serve any purpose and sounds a bit like a 'yeah, but no but yeah' Vicki Pollard story! And I doubt whether any company would pass on any note of poor customer phone to the relevant departments or use the record of your conversations in dealing with the problem - it's the usual case of starting from scratch explaining what has happened.

nickmack

kijog wrote: »

I think the recorded phone call thing is a red herring.

Well, it's certainly not to help the customer, it's there to back up their version of what was said. If they find themselves giving out false/misleading information, it's been known for recordings to 'disappear'.

I also think recounting the story of how you spoke to 'James' or 'David' on such and such a date in any letter doesn't serve any purpose and sounds a bit like a 'yeah, but no but yeah' Vicki Pollard story!

I would always do this anyway. If you're told something that is not noted at their end, referring to a name and time/date reference can hold some weight, rather than saying, I don't know who I spoke to.

And I doubt whether any company would pass on any note of poor customer phone to the relevant departments or use the record of your conversations in dealing with the problem - it's the usual case of starting from scratch explaining what has happened.

Yes, I'm afraid this is my experience, on quite a few occassions.