Nobody likes a moaner but….

Just so you know we’re not condoning anyone starts to complain to companies for no reason! However if a CEO/manager/member of staff doesn’t know about the good and the bad bits of their company you’re potentially sending that company to an early ‘grave’.

Remember (generally) people who start businesses don’t do it for money, they do it because they care about something, they want to fix something or they the love the thrill. Money is a by-product of that and remember money doesn’t buy you happiness as much as magazines, TV shows, films & newspapers want you to believe.

So next time you have a good/bad experience with a company think to yourself “If I owned this company would I be proud of what just happened? Would I like to think my customers would warn we of this, so I can fix it”. At the very least you can walk away knowing you’ve tried, if they decide to ignore you that’s their decision. There is nothing worse than looking back and knowing you could have helped someone but you didn’t.

We do this little thing where if a member of staff (generally on the phone) has been particularly helpful we will ask to speak with their manager (it normally confuses/scares that member of staff but it’s worth it). After a few minutes you get speaking to the right person and we normally just tell them why that original person was so good and what could be done to make their job more efficient (don’t say easier). You never know next time you ring up you might get that member of staff or even their manager. Boom! the perfect opportunity to get an extra discount 😉

So to sum up always be helpful to others even if they’re taking your cash 😉 If they ignore you at least you know you’ve tried and failing that fire up Tripadvisor etc for your negative review 😉

A few tips to improve your chance of something in return:

• Start off with a friendly email or phone call (depending on the size of business), if nothing is offered/happens then speak publicly about the issue (e.g. Twitter / Facebook etc)
• Give us much information as possible
• Know your consumer rights and quote them if you want to speed things up
• Always be polite but not apologetic
• Act quickly, there is no point discussing an issue that happened months ago
• Keep copies of any letters, emails you send & receive
• Including your full name, address and email on any letters/emails will help speed up the process
• Don’t settle for 2nd best, often you will be given something to say sorry, if you don’t think that is good enough tell them and demand something else.

An example:

We had a meal at Chiquitos for 6 people, meal was just over £150. It was awful service, 20 mins to order drinks, 50 mins for food, some burnt, 15 mins to get the bill, used student discount (obviously) but no extra money off the bill.

The next day emailed customer services, along with the receipt number, time of receipt, store name, full explanation of the problems/issues and a week later was sent a £30 gift voucher to say sorry.

Then a week or so later we go to a different & frankly much better Chiquitos for another meal and use student discount first (obviously) and then hand over the £30 gift vouchers. “Sorry, but you can only use one promotion at a time….” explained the waitress…We explain that the £30 voucher was in return for the poor meal on a previous visit.

“No it’s one promotion or the other” we get told again.

OK time to politely ask to speak with the manager. Few minutes later, student discount taken off + £30 off voucher taken off.

In other words always be prepared to ask for the manager, say you’re sorry to the person serving you and explain why your chain of events is going to happen. e.g. the £30 voucher wasn’t a promotion, it was a partial refund on a previous voucher. There would have been no point us visiting again if we were just going to get the £30 off voucher and no student discount.