You buy a pair of shoes and the heels fall off. The air conditioner in the restaurant next door keeps you awake until two o'clock in the morning. The hole in the pavement outside your home that makes you stumble. What do you do? Nothing, except grumble to yourself and your friends? If you wish, you could do better at complaining and getting action.
However, don't think we're only interested in encouraging you to complain, praise can be as powerful as criticism in case of getting the same results.

How to complain?

Before you start out in pursuit of a complaint, you should ask yourself what you want to achieve. It's straight forward enough if you want something putting rights for yourself. But often, the best you'll get will be an apology, or the hope that things might improve for the next customer. Are you prepared to carry on?

Don't be too quick to quote your rights. Give shops, for example, a chance to sort things as a part of good “Customer Relations”. Remember, a little humor can lessen the sting.

The longer you delay making a complaint, the weaker your legal rights may be, and the less sympathy you are likely to get from the company at fault.

If you can manage it, it's worth turning up in person at least for the first round. With a friendly manner, your problem maybe solved there and then. There are some people who seem to take a delight in complaining about even the most trivial things. But they never think of praise. Yet taking the trouble to remark on good service can also improve standards.

Complaining about faulty goods and services:

Most of the things you'll ever want to complain about will probably come under this heading. For example, the steam iron that refuses to steam. You can use the law to support your case but we also show where alternative approaches might, in practice, get better results.

Tackling shops:

Mrs. S found a piece of metal tube in her salad. She knew she could make a trouble or report it to the police. But instead of doing this, she decided to face the shop first. They were so grateful for her approach directly to them, that they refunded her money and explained how the metal had got into the food and the steps they planned to prevent it happening again. As a gesture of good will, she got a voucher to spend in the store.

You can see that it can pay to hold your fire and see, first, what a supplier has to say. Obviously you'll feel happier if it's clear that the attempts are made to get to the root of the problem and other customers aren't going to be caught out too.

The aim of this report is to help you stand and speak up for your rights, use the perfect way to get what you want and to make sure that this won't happen to someone else.

...NourHan Abd ELWhaB