IP Democracy: Forget Authorities: Customer Service Complaints Aired on the Web

Contributor Randall Stross has this piece in today’s New York Times about how the Internet is emerging as a megaphone for customer service complaints. It focuses on two incidents that have received widespread attention because disgruntled customers recorded problematic customer service complaints in audio and video and posted them to the web.

The first is the by-now infamous recording of AOL customer Vincent Ferrari trying, with mounting objections from an AOL customer service rep, to cut off his AOL service. (Stross points out that AOL in 2004 and 2005 reached settlements with the FTC and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on this very problem — customers unable to quit their subscriptions).

The second is the very funny video of a Comcast technician who fell asleep on customer Brian Finkelsteins’s couch while on hold to his offices. The delightful point of the piece is not that these tales are true and amusing but that companies now face widespread repercussions from bad customer service, fallout that is far worse than before the rise of blogs, YouTube and other outlets used for disseminating such damning documentation.

How should Mr. Finkelstein have responded? By writing a letter of complaint to some distant regulatory authority that will require years before it acts? Far more effective means are now at hand. He recorded, then uploaded the video clip with some humorous asides about missed appointments and unfulfilled promises, and got immediate satisfaction in the act of sharing. More than 500,000 viewers have watched Mr. Finkelstein’s video “thank you” note to Comcast.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 2, 2006 10:03 AM to IP Democracy