If a search is so high up and allows people to post comments and the first comment someone sees is a complaint people will jump on the bandwagon thinking this is the proper place.
The submitted page is a directory listing for the Chicago Better Business Bureau. The directory allows business reviews. 11 people have tagged the BBB itself as 1 star, with comments indicating that they have a variety of complaints against non-BBB businesses. The working assumption is that because this listing for the BBB was the first on a search engine when looking for "Chicago BBB" or something that people, without reading any of the page to correct their misconception, decided "Oh, this is where I go to file complaints WITH the BBB". (Note to non-Americans: the BBB is a semi-official semi-impartial semi-compliance-mandatory arbitrator between businesses and consumers, which many people know, in a vague way, will listen to any complaint you have about any business and try to resolve it for you.)
Yes, exactly. The largest text on the screen says "Better Business Bureau." People are asked to leave reviews. They're assuming this is a place to file complaints that the BBB will follow up on. They are in error.
Minus "semi-official", minus "semi-impartial" (well, maybe that depends on the BBB in question), and minus "semi-compliance-mandatory".
The BBB in no way is official or has the power to do anything (except maybe help you complain to the people who do have the power to make things happen without extortion). That's quite possibly the biggest misconception about the BBB ever. It's a lot simpler to first ask the business, then go to the city/state/federal licensing and consumer affairs departments and directly file a complaint. Maybe the information doesn't become public, but businesses also tend to Start Caring when it's their license(s) or permits at stake, and it's not like the BBB is even close to acceptable in this regard.
Well, I used to be super trigger happy about filing disputes, but not anymore. Most of the time when there's been a mistake the business has usually been open to fixing it. I deal with inventory for a small business and buy/sell a lot of stuff, and I've only disputed one charge this year - personal, to boot - because the business wouldn't get back to me about the issue.
Anyway, if it's about the alarm company, we didn't pay them but they wouldn't stop sending us bills since obviously we stopped paying them after terminating the service on our end per the contract we had signed originally. This soon added up to a lot of money and threatening to send to collections, and I just got really super tired of the BS of not picking up their equipment and sending us those stupid bills. I sued them for what I thought was a logical amount of money in small claims court, then the owner stopped being a dick after I ended up having to get a sheriff to serve the papers to him, and then we had to meet in person in the court and he was AWFUL but the whole process was worth it to get him to finally go away.
I'd like to argue against that. Many people jump straight into charge-backs without contacting the business first. That's really uncool, because it doesn't even give the business a chance to correct the situation, but immediately applies the harshest possible punishment to said business.
Chargebacks are pretty uncool from a small business point of view. There's pretty much no appeal (there's an appeal procedures but CC companies always side with their customers, unless you're really big), and they result in:
1) deduction of the charge itself
2) an additional $35 fee
3) bumping you up on the chargeback statistics
If 1% of your transactions or 1% of the amount of your transactions is chargebacks, merchant banks will often just close your account at short notice. 1% is not all that much, particularly when you're starting out. Hell, at the beginning, you may only have a 100 transactions a month. If 1 or 2 of them do a chargeback rather than talking to you, they can take out your business before it's even had a chance to take off.
Because of this, if you threaten a chargeback, most businesses will bend over backwards for you. So, don't actually do a chargeback - give them a chance.
Of course, if the business doesn't respond at all, do go for the chargeback... just give them a chance first.
Very much agreed on all points. Also it should be noted that just doing the nice thing by contacting the business and letting them know you have a problem can be a lot faster and nicer than the whole chargeback process.
Like I said, I used to go this route but I stopped when I realized how bad it was. Now that I let the business know first (and I appreciate when customers at my businesses do the same), most of them have fixed the problem and usually thrown something extra in too - free shipping, store credit, extra products, and what have you. No need to even threaten a chargeback unless it's been like a week or two since the problem started and nobody's even replied back.
I used to work for the a casino, and as any hotel operates, the prices fluctuate based on how full we are, if it's a holiday, etc.
I would get A LOT of calls from people that would hit up the travel.yahoo.com page for our casino/hotel, see that the price was $145, and complain to me that I wasn't quoting them the price on 'your website'. I would explain over and over that travel.yahoo.com is NOT owned or operated by us, but these people would not listen. To be fair, casino patrons are not the brightest bunch...
But why is it that people are so stupid sometimes? I mean, if I put up a website that says "Larry's Business" and post a photo of "Larry's Business" and make some sort of claim about the business, why in god's name do people think that it __must__ be official? How is this any different than my writing crap on a napkin in crayon and telling them that it's the 'real deal'.
There were quite a few people that really needed to have a hammer go through the phone and knock them in the face.
I actually see this as how users can creatively use a site for what they really want to use it for despite how it is designed. These people wanted to vent their complaints and have other people see them. Since they were complaining about really small businesses, few people would ever really see them unless they searched for that specific business (that is how the site is designed.)
So by crowding all of their complaints on the BBB listing they can maximize how many people see their complaints. If Yahoo really cared about this product they could come up with some creative ways to get the user's entering their comments in the correct place by also providing an outlet for them to have their complaints be more visible.
In a sense all of these random comments are complaints against the BBB because the BBB makes it so hard to complain online (or doesn't provide a better way to do it.)
Guy's blog, named "Ok/Cancel", has a story about Google, and thus comes up first for the search of "Cancel Google". He gets inundated with comments from people trying to "cancel" google.
I really wish the guy would do something to help these people, instead of just letting them throw their complaints uselessly into the aether while thinking they're accomplishing something; perhaps redirect the page to http://www.google.com/contact/ (though, oddly, I don't see a single point of contact there for "general complaints"; they seem to suggest using their Help newsgroups.)
http://getsatisfaction.com/google/ might actually be your best shot at a clear, simple and direct response, which is sad given how good Google is at keeping most of their other services simple.
Note well that there is no text on the page unambiguously indicating that this is something other than what these people think it is.
It'd be easy to say that they are just stupid, but the page is a cluttered mess in the volume and variety of information it is trying to present and the number of actions it is inviting the user to do. It is a breeding ground for stupid.
19 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] threadIf a search is so high up and allows people to post comments and the first comment someone sees is a complaint people will jump on the bandwagon thinking this is the proper place.
Edit: The top result also has similar 'reviews'.
The BBB in no way is official or has the power to do anything (except maybe help you complain to the people who do have the power to make things happen without extortion). That's quite possibly the biggest misconception about the BBB ever. It's a lot simpler to first ask the business, then go to the city/state/federal licensing and consumer affairs departments and directly file a complaint. Maybe the information doesn't become public, but businesses also tend to Start Caring when it's their license(s) or permits at stake, and it's not like the BBB is even close to acceptable in this regard.
I seem to be writing a lot about the BBB here (i.e. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=541244), but someone has to spread the word.
Anyway, if it's about the alarm company, we didn't pay them but they wouldn't stop sending us bills since obviously we stopped paying them after terminating the service on our end per the contract we had signed originally. This soon added up to a lot of money and threatening to send to collections, and I just got really super tired of the BS of not picking up their equipment and sending us those stupid bills. I sued them for what I thought was a logical amount of money in small claims court, then the owner stopped being a dick after I ended up having to get a sheriff to serve the papers to him, and then we had to meet in person in the court and he was AWFUL but the whole process was worth it to get him to finally go away.
Chargebacks are pretty uncool from a small business point of view. There's pretty much no appeal (there's an appeal procedures but CC companies always side with their customers, unless you're really big), and they result in:
1) deduction of the charge itself
2) an additional $35 fee
3) bumping you up on the chargeback statistics
If 1% of your transactions or 1% of the amount of your transactions is chargebacks, merchant banks will often just close your account at short notice. 1% is not all that much, particularly when you're starting out. Hell, at the beginning, you may only have a 100 transactions a month. If 1 or 2 of them do a chargeback rather than talking to you, they can take out your business before it's even had a chance to take off.
Because of this, if you threaten a chargeback, most businesses will bend over backwards for you. So, don't actually do a chargeback - give them a chance.
Of course, if the business doesn't respond at all, do go for the chargeback... just give them a chance first.
Like I said, I used to go this route but I stopped when I realized how bad it was. Now that I let the business know first (and I appreciate when customers at my businesses do the same), most of them have fixed the problem and usually thrown something extra in too - free shipping, store credit, extra products, and what have you. No need to even threaten a chargeback unless it's been like a week or two since the problem started and nobody's even replied back.
I would get A LOT of calls from people that would hit up the travel.yahoo.com page for our casino/hotel, see that the price was $145, and complain to me that I wasn't quoting them the price on 'your website'. I would explain over and over that travel.yahoo.com is NOT owned or operated by us, but these people would not listen. To be fair, casino patrons are not the brightest bunch...
But why is it that people are so stupid sometimes? I mean, if I put up a website that says "Larry's Business" and post a photo of "Larry's Business" and make some sort of claim about the business, why in god's name do people think that it __must__ be official? How is this any different than my writing crap on a napkin in crayon and telling them that it's the 'real deal'.
There were quite a few people that really needed to have a hammer go through the phone and knock them in the face.
You may have a story or three for them, just for therapeutic purposes.
(Haven't the faintest idea if the site's stories are legit or ghostwritten - some do seem a stretch.)
So by crowding all of their complaints on the BBB listing they can maximize how many people see their complaints. If Yahoo really cared about this product they could come up with some creative ways to get the user's entering their comments in the correct place by also providing an outlet for them to have their complaints be more visible.
In a sense all of these random comments are complaints against the BBB because the BBB makes it so hard to complain online (or doesn't provide a better way to do it.)
Guy's blog, named "Ok/Cancel", has a story about Google, and thus comes up first for the search of "Cancel Google". He gets inundated with comments from people trying to "cancel" google.
http://getsatisfaction.com/google/ might actually be your best shot at a clear, simple and direct response, which is sad given how good Google is at keeping most of their other services simple.
It'd be easy to say that they are just stupid, but the page is a cluttered mess in the volume and variety of information it is trying to present and the number of actions it is inviting the user to do. It is a breeding ground for stupid.