How to make your complaint heard

Every company receives tones of complaints. They simply don’t have time to solve or even read all of them. Usually companies start to take care about customers when they are very insistent or take legal actions. It is a sad true, but it is our life. There is very common scheme, when customer writes complaints letters, makes phone calls while he is hoarse and his fingers ache. But he doesn’t get any result. And when, at last, someone answers his phone call, he’s redirected to other person who also doesn’t know what to do in your case.

There are very simple tips that will help you to make effective complaint that will be heard.

First of all decide what the complaint is about and what result you want to get. Write down key points you want to discuss before making a call or writing a complaint. Keep your personal details to hand, you may need them. Find out what department you need to contact in order to solve your problem. Talking to officials, make it clear that you are lodging a formal complaint. Remain calm all the time, no matter how angry you are, in this case you will be able to explain your claims better. Ensure company that you know rules and laws, they will take you more seriously. If person you are contacting doesn’t want or can’t help you, let them know that you want to take things further. Record all your talks, time and date, save the whole correspondence. Request a name and address where you can write after your conversation, in order to confirm everything in written. Ask when they will get back to you. Note, that it is more effective to write by post or email. Some companies may ignore letters. If you decided to write an email, make sure you took the address from the official web site. Make sure you provide company with all necessary information on who you are (account numbers, name, address), but avoid emailing financial information. Operate bare facts, there is no need to describe your feelings and disappointing. Make everything possible to be heard.

Also there is another way you can make a complaint – you can post it on complaint sites. There are a lot of such web sites. Some of them allow combining people with similar problems (sometimes they even join to class actions). Here is a short list of the most popular complaint sites, posting complaint there you make additional steps to be heard.

BBB (Better Business Bureau) – consumer protection organization. Their main purpose is “cultivating a community of trustworthy businesses and setting standards for marketplace trust by encouraging and support best practices.” BBB gathers posted complaints and reports through United States and Canada and alerts the public.

FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is a government agency that promotes consumer protection and “eliminate anti-competitive behavior in the marketplace.”

Consumer Action Website contains tips for purchasing different products and services as well as information about scam and fraud. It is operated by Federal Citizen Information Center of the U.S. General Services Administration.

CFA (Consumer Federation of America) is an “advocacy, research, education, and service organization” that presents consumer issues before Congress, the White House and other authority organizations.

And the most popular websites for posting complaints: Complaints.com, My3cents.com, PissedConsumer.com, Ripoffreport.com.