Aggrieved consumers vent from Internet soapbox
By Kevin Marron
To The Globe and Mail -- 07/27/2001
When Shawn Theriault tried to complain to his phone company about a problem with his line, he was put on hold. So he let his fingers do the talking while he waited for the next available operator.
Typing with one hand as he held his cellphone to his ear with the other, he tapped out an e-mail on his computer and fired it off to ecomplaints.com, a Web site devoted to airing consumer grievances on-line.
"As a consumer I've been walked on a lot, so thought if I made my complaint public, it might work out better for me," says Mr. Theriault, a self-employed computer consultant from Burlington, Ont.
Like thousands of other consumers, Mr. Theriault has discovered the Internet offers a soapbox from which to air gripes, vent frustration and warn others about problems encountered in the marketplace.
There's a flip side, too: The Internet also gives companies a megaphone through which they can tell their side of the story and get their corporate message across.
Those that neglect to use this tool or ignore customers' on-line complaints do so at their peril, warns Patrick Folliott, a former journalist and direct marketer, whose Toronto-based company, RealityClick Inc., runs a Web site that offers consumers a place to air their views and companies a way to respond to on-line customer input.
"Companies that are forward-thinking and truly customer-centric realize that the Web can be their friend or it can be their worst nightmare," he says.
"It used to be that a dissatisfied customer could tell two friends and they could tell two friends and so on. Now, there's a whole bunch of zeros behind those people. I can e-mail 200 friends, those 200 friends can tell 2,000 and your customer base could disappear without you even knowing it."
Only a small percentage of customers take the trouble to complain about a product or service, and those who do have usually experienced a series of problems that have escalated to the point where they are angry enough to post their complaint on several Web sites, says Jennifer Biscoe, founder and chief executive officer of New York-based Complaintz.com Inc., owner of the ecomplaints.com site.
There are dozens of cybergriping Web sites -- with names such as bitchaboutit.com, my3cents.com and thesqueakywheel.com -- where consumers can post complaints and sometimes receive responses from the companies they are griping about.
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