Power to the People: how to respond when a company treats you unfairly

Buyers routinely get the short end of the stick in the classic consumer relationship. We are the one who needs to defer agree to the vendors' terms and conditions and we are at the mercy of their decisions.   In the buying relationship, we are the weaker half.  Can you imagine if it were the other way around?

Dream with me.  Picture yourself telling Imagination Airlines that if they want you to buy a plane ticket on IA, you will need to be able to bring three 75 lb. suitcases with you at no charge, and you will need an aisle seat up at the front of the plane, and since you are going to a family affair that evening, there can be no delays in taking off.  And Imagination Airlines would be forced to comply with your terms if they want to keep you as a customer.  Think about it.

Instead, the opposite is true.  Real Life Airlines tells you that you are limited to two suitcases, no more than 50 lbs. each, that the first suitcase will be $25 and the second one will be $35 and if you go over the weight limit, you will pay double that.  And this is all in addition to your plane fare of $350. And once you pay that $350, you may not change or cancel the ticket, or you will be fined $100.  And for the privilege of paying that $350, Real Life Airlines might or might not leave at the scheduled time that they promised you.  There could possibly be several hours delay, so you need to plan accordingly.  Or Real Life Airlines might cancel your flight all together.  They might give you a little compensatory gift, like a $50 voucher on a future flight that expires in 60 days for your trouble, if they do, but they might not.  Sounds crazy?  But every single time we fly, we agree to all sorts of conditions similar to this, do we not?  Consumers are basically at the mercy of vendors.

Do you have a nightmare story of how a vendor treated you unfairly?  Be it an airline, a cell phone service, an online retailer, etc., I think that as consumers, most of us have been treated unfairly at one point or another.   And there is so little recourse.

Consumer abuse is a special irritant of mine.  As a naturally frugal person, I feel that vendors should be grateful for my business and my money, and that we, as consumers, irrationally accept a tremendous amount of consumer abuse because we are so used to getting that short end of the stick.  The norm is to accept poor treatment.

What do you do when you get shafted by a vendor?  Here are some pointers on how to take action.

1. Call the company right away.  If you can't call, email.  Don't wait. The longer you wait, the more the situation festers, the less likely the vendor will be able to address your complaint. If it's a service that needs addressing, find the company's number on Facebook. If it's a consumer good that's faulty, call the number on the back of the packaging. I recently called a large consumer goods company (let's call them G & P) because I had bought some fabric softener bars that came apart in the dryer. They immediately sent me coupons for free replacement items.
2. If you get a Customer Service Representative who is completely immovable and inflexible, and (s)he is just parroting back company policy to you, immediately ask to speak to a supervisor.  The CSR might discourage you and say that the supervisor will tell you the same thing, but be persistent.
3. If the supervisor is as inflexible as the CSR, thank her/him and hang up.  Call back the next day and see if you can speak to someone more flexible.  You can have two very different experiences with the same company, depending on whom you speak to.
   
   Several years ago, a member of my family was seriously ill in the hospital.  I flew to New York and was there for about two months.  I used my cell phone the entire time, for communicating with my family and friends about the situation.  I was in "emergency mode" at the time and never gave a second thought to how much I was using the cellphone.
   
   After the family member passed away, I returned to Denver and received a $650 cellphone bill from GiantCellPhoneCompany.  Yes. $650.  For two months.  I didn't know what to do.  I had made those calls and I was responsible for them.  I called GiantCellPhoneCompany, ostensibly to work out a payment plan with them.  The CSR was so sympathetic to what had happened, he waived $500 of that bill, bringing me back to my normal cellphone bill of $75 per month.  I could not believe how generous, kind and understanding he was and I could not rave about GiantCellPhoneCompany enough.
   
   Four years later, I was still a loyal GiantCellPhoneCompany customer.  I decided to buy the brand new iPhone (it had just come out) and back then, the only provider was AT&T.  I had about 9 months left on my GiantCellPhoneCompany contract, and I called to see what they could do.  I spoke to an absolute shrew of a CSR.  She told me that according to the terms of my contract, I had to pay $50 per month if I wanted to cancel my service before the end of the contract.  She showed zero flexibility, regardless of the fact that I had been a customer of GiantCellPhoneCompany for over a decade.  She was robotic in her responses and then, when I asked her if there was some way to reduce the contract penalty, she got mean.  When I asked her to put me in touch with a supervisor, she put me on hold for 20 minutes and then disconnected me.
   
   I called back the next day.  I got a CSR who was much more human.  He told me that I had the option of switching to a bare bones plan of $10 per month instead of paying the cancellation clause of $50 per month.  Right away, I reduced my cost to $90 instead of $450.  After some more cajoling, we worked it down to $5 per month.   I ended up paying $45 instead of $450.


4. If, after three tries, you still get nowhere with the vendor, bring out the big guns:  Social Media.
   1. Write a Facebook post about the wrong that you suffered at the hands of the vendor.  Keep it short and sweet...no need to go into details here.  Make sure you mention two things. One, that you will never, ever use the vendor's services ever again and two, that you will make sure none of your family or friends use that vendor ever again.  Briefly describe how disappointed and upset you are.  Avoid using any foul language.  And most importantly tag the vendor.  Let me repeat that.  TAG THE VENDOR.
      
      One of the most powerful things you can learn to do on Facebook is to tag someone.  Here's a little Facebook 101 for you: tagging someone on Facebook means that that person (or, if it's a company or organization, the administrator for that entity,) will get an email that he has been tagged in your post.  Also, depending on that person/company's settings, your post will show up on their Facebook Wall.  They can delete it if they want to, but the damage will have been done.  How do you tag a person/company?  When you are typing out your post, the first time you mention the company's name, type in a "@" and then slowly spell out the company's name until it appears.  Select the name, and it will appear in your post with a hyperlink.
   2. Post your complaint on the vendor's Facebook Wall.  Don't be surprised if they immediately delete it.  If you don't hear from them after about two days, post it again.  
   3. Tweet about your experience, very briefly and make sure you again tag the vendor. Since you are limited to 140 characters, your tweet might be something like: I will never use @NortheastAirlines again after my terrible experience flying to Tampa.
   4. If you are complaining about an item that you have purchased rather than a service, find the item online and review it honestly.  Companies routinely monitor their product pages on Amazon, Ebay and other large companies' pages, and are likely to try to get in touch with you after you negatively review their product, as bad consumer reviews are powerful deterrents to others' buying.  Read the interesting thread about this here.  

Now, what happens if the company/vendor actually gets in touch with you, corrects their mistake and makes amends? Make sure you post about this as well. I would leave up the original complaint (after all, the consumer abuse did happen, didn't it?), but I would append it with "After posting about this incident on Facebook, Real Life Airlines issued me a $37 refund and an apology.  Thank you RLA."  They deserve that much.

I have been using social media as consumer satisfaction tool with great success.  After three unsuccessful phone calls to customer service, I recently got a travel service to refund an unfair charge to me after I posted about them and tagged them on my Facebook Wall.  I did this again with an airline.  I also got a large retailer to refund an item that they had previously refused to take back.  Social media is a very potent consumer tool.  I find it kind of sad that it takes this sort of negative action to get certain companies to correct their mistakes and to give consumers the respectful treatment we deserve, but there it is.

What have I left out?  Have you had a recent run in with a company or vendor?  How did you take action?  Feel free to post in the comments below.