Lets say you are interested in a product or a service. You browse through the list online or in-store. If it is the latter, there is typically a sales rep to help you along the way. You buy the product or sign up for the service. More often than not, everything will work out fine. But when things don’t, you are back on the phone talking to customer service or anyone that is willing to hear your grievance. It is quite possible that the issue is resolved. Given the focus of organizations on making sales and booking revenue compared to delivering good customer service, it is more likely that you may struggle through the process. What is one to do in such situations – you, the customer, against the edifice of an organization that now refuses to address your concern?
A classic example of how bad customer service can come back to bite is RuinedMyTrip.com – a website created by Vishal Rao after a bad experience with MakeMyTrip, with a view for customers that have undergone a similar ordeal to share their stories. In a Google search for MakeMyTrip, Rao’s site shows up on the first page as a red flag to prospective customers. Unlike Vishal, most consumers may not have the necessary skills to create a website and get back to the offending organization in a direct way. Fortunately there are other sites to the rescue.
One of the first websites that shows up on search for consumer complaints is ConsumerComplaints.in. It lets you register and post your complaint for free. The interface leaves a lot to be desired and the complaints are listed as a poster-board for potential customers looking to research a product before they buy it. It is unclear if the site follows up on the complaints with the organizations. There are several other similar sites, and given the prime positioning of online ads on these sites and bad site design, it is unclear how effective these sites are in having one’s complaint resolved.
The humorously named ConsumerDaddy with the tagline ‘Daddy knows’ is another option. The site is better designed, and lets you register and post a complaint for free. They also claim to have a guaranteed program to address the complaint within the first 30 days without a fee – a strong claim to make.
There are a couple of sites on the lines of consumer activism. Grahak Seva is one such site. A part of the Grahak Jago initiative, it allows a clean ad-free interface that seems to be singularly focussed on having the consumer’s voice heard. Consumer Grievance is an old school html website that offers substantial information on consumer courts and laws, if one chooses to pursue the legal option.
The official Department of Consumer Affairs site links to a consumer grievance redressal system. It took us a while to figure out what link you need to click to get to posting your complaint; evidently not very dummy-friendly.
Akosha is a fee-based service that follows-up on complaints and has them addressed. It comes across as a more organized effort and a cleaner interface, and also lists the team responsible for the service. For complaints that involve a modest amount of money, this may be the place to go to have them addressed.
The above are just a sampling of the many sites out there. It appears like there is a need for a one-stop complaint site that would be more effective in having complaints addressed, rather than this proliferation of mostly complaint listing sites. Then again, if one is dissatisfied with a particular consumer grievance site, where does one complain? The multiplicity of sites may play their part in amplifying a complaint and making sure the consumer’s voice is heard, and make companies more cognizant of a rather neglected aspect of running a business – providing good post-sale customer service.
Jugaad Times 