So my SF writer buddy Alex Schvartsman wrote a blog post about the trouble he's been having with Square (the online payments processor). Amongst his complaints was the terrible customer service at Square and a lack of communication on their part. Then the post went viral (getting picked up by Gawker, amongst others). Which, predictably led to Square's customer support team getting in touch with him, and, eventually, sending him the money that he'd lost.
This is a great story about the power of complaining on the internet. Because when you complain on the internet--and especially when you complain about a tech company--you'll often get results that you cannot get through normal customer service channels. Companies are very sensitive to the power of word-of-mouth and viral marketing, and they realize that negative press has much further penetration than good press. For instance, everyone knows what Comcast is an awful company with awful customer service. How do we know that? It's just the sourceless aggregation of all the complaints we've ever heard about them.
I also have a story about the success of complaining about the internet!
In the fall, my Kobo e-reader stopped working. Now, I've had a number of failures with Amazon e-readers (maybe I am just hell on e-readers) and in each case, they've replaced it. Since the Kobo reader had quit working so soon after I bought it (and I was still within the warranty period), I expected that they'd replace it as well. However, they refused and insisted that the damage had been my fault. So I wrote a blog post and then I took to Twitter with the following stream of tweets.
Would not recommend buying an @kobo reader. Mine stopped working after 5 months. $200 down the drain.
— Rahul Kanakia (@rahkan) November 4, 2013
Even though my @kobo reader was well within the warranty period, the tech support ppl looked at photos of it and insisted dmg was my fault.
— Rahul Kanakia (@rahkan) November 4, 2013
Told @kobo tech support that the screen corruption had only appeared _after_ the device stopped working and there was _no_ dmg.
— Rahul Kanakia (@rahkan) November 4, 2013
But @kobo didn't care. @amazon tech support is much better. They realize you're not just selling a device, you're selling the infrastructure
— Rahul Kanakia (@rahkan) November 4, 2013
Oh well, will go back to @AmazonKindle and will never use an @kobo product again.
— Rahul Kanakia (@rahkan) November 4, 2013
It was not an accident that I included @kobo in all of my replies. The whole reason for spewing out that many whining and aggravated tweets was so somehow get the attention of the company. And, sure enough, I woke up the next day to the following tweet:
@rahkan Hey there, we just saw your tweets. We can help you here. Do you have an incident number we can refer to? Let us restore your faith.
— KoboHelp (@KoboHelp) November 5, 2013
And after going back and forth with them for a month or so (Kobo's customer service is pretty bad even when they're trying to help you), they finally replaced my eReader at no charge (besides shipping!)
There you go. Personally, my complaints didn't get nearly the penetration that Alex's did. My tweets were favorited and retweeted by no one. And I only have 500 or so Twitter followers. But that's enough to get some redress when you really want it.