Consumer Complaints

The Consumer Complaints get a Social Networking Boost

Everyone knows someone who has had a couple of serious consumer complaints or issues - a washing machine manufacturer who won't fix a machine that goes bad two days after it's been bought, an airline that won't pay compensation for rude behavior by a flight attendant, a bank that loses your money and takes its own time putting it back - we've all been there and we all know someone who's been there as well. For many people, going up against the offending company can be a whole new kind of challenge in itself. They call the company and they are put through a labyrinthine phone tree that doesn't go anywhere. When they finally do get to talk to a person, he seems to be some poorly paid worker in the Philippines who has to follow some meaningless script. And then, even once the company promises to do something to compensate them, they have to run after them for ages to get them to keep their word. For years, the sorry best that anyone could do was to compose a letter and write to the BBB. Or an online complaints forum.

While the BBB is a great place to go to, they really have become a bureaucracy. And they get paid by the companies they list. You really don't know where their loyalties lie. There have been complaints of recent that the BBB doesn't take consumer complaints that seriously anymore. And anyway, shouldn't there be a better, quicker and more satisfying option for the social networking age? Well, there is one; and it is quite descriptively, called Gripe.

Gripe (or gr!pe, as the company's logo reads) is a service that gives the consumer a voice he can use without having to fill out a form and write a whole letter. The service comes to you in the form of an app that you install on your smartphone, which connects to all your Facebook and Twitter friends. If you have had a difficult consumer experience with a company that reasonable efforts haven't managed to resolve, you can flip on your Gripe app and become a loose cannon. The belief there is that companies really fear bad publicity. Whatever you post on Gripe automatically goes out on your Facebook page and to all your Twitter followers.

So how does Gripe get around the problem that there are some people out there who just bully companies for no reason? Well, the thing is, that anything you post on Gripe, goes to every one of your Facebook friends. If you don't really have a legitimate complaint, you can come off as a jerk. And all your friends are going to tell you that you're full of it.

The genius of Gripe is that it puts your complaints on the Internet in a place everyone will read it. There are lots of forums online where people come to share their consumer nightmares. The thing with Gripe is that it uses social networking. It makes sure that your complaints are read by a thousand people who know you and like you. They are going to take your complaint seriously and begin hating the company that treated you this way. If you put a complaint out on a public forum, you would only reach people who didn't know you and the impact would be minimal. Get on Gripe then. Resolve things quickly.