Vote with your feet??

[werfie]

Ok, so I've been on a mission to stop supporting any type of business which I consider useless, unethical, ridiculous, arrogant, fraudulent etc. This is cool and I always believed that the best way is to vote with your feet, and use those feet to take your money elsewhere. But.... of late i've been finding that I'm running out of options. Despite being on a one man tirade against "bad service" (and this includes everyone's definitions of this), I'm starting to realise that all hope may have gone.

From my own experience and from sites like Hellopeter.com and forums like these, there just doesn't seem to be any type of "ethical" businesses out there anymore. Now I realise that using the word ethical and business in the same sentance is a bit naive, but then lets just say that plain good old customer service, quality products, great value type businesses that offer these to try and be the best and own the largest market share, simply doesn't exist anymore.

If I'm fed up with my bank, and I go to the next one, they simply just do the same thing at a different time in a different way. If my cellphone provider sucks and I try to port, I get stuck with a bunch of problems on the other one, If my Supermarket gives me bad service and I go to the next one, I end up paying twice as much and pretty much end up getting the same bad service... so it goes on. So what the hell are we suppose to do??? Is this just pretty much what we will be stuck with forever!

It's starting to feel like SSDD (same **** different day) or rather SSDP (same **** different place) is all that is left for us????? So in essance, voting with your feet simply doesn't work anymore

How do we fix it??

[HavocXphere]

Hellopeter.com

When I think of unethical business practices, Hellopeter ranks pretty damn high on the list. They effectively hold a company's PR image hostage & only allow the companies to respond after paying a "fee" to earn the right to respond. So as a company you have a choice of either leaving the bad PR there forever...and google will show it in results till the end of time or paying their "fee":

There is an annual registration, set-up and admin. fee payable by EVERY Company Who Responds to reports. The annual fee is R375.00 plus VAT (Total: R427.50 per annum). Companies are also charged an Annual Response Fee according to the number of reports currently on the site about the company.

Not sure why extortion laws don't cover this, but they should.

Shysters #1 in my opinion.

[Saajid]

You're going to get problems with all companies. Even the biggest and the best in the world have their problems. This is not unique to South Africa.

However, I would say use the company that you feel deserves your money the most, more than any of their competitors. This will change from time to time, as some companies improve and others deteriorate. Write a blog entry or a forum thread about poor service you received from a company. At least let it be recorded, and let other consumers be warned. Well at least that's why I'm doing on my own blog.

Don't give up, don't give in. Only way things will improve as if we fight for it. If we allow the status quo to remain the status quo, we have only ourselves to blame.

[NAG - Wesley]

Go to the shop that gives you less crap than the others. There's crappy service wherever you go but customers must stop thinking they're special and actually do things like ask for reference numbers, get names of their helpline staff and hold employees of a company responsible if they made a stuff up.

You only get continually shafted with bad service if you don't demand good service from those who have failed.

[Totempole]

When I think of unethical business practices, Hellopeter ranks pretty damn high on the list. They effectively hold a company's PR image hostage & only allow the companies to respond after paying a "fee" to earn the right to respond. So as a company you have a choice of either leaving the bad PR there forever...and google will show it in results till the end of time or paying their "fee":

This is quite true. The concept of Hellopeter is a good one, but charging companies to "tell their side of the story" is unethical to say the least. Having said that, each complaint/compliment only stays on Hellopeter for a period of 12 months, and probably an additional 6 months in Google's cache.

It's a fact though, that being a "Company who Responds" will attract more complaints and compliments than a Company who doesn't. In my honest opinion, it's best to be a company who doesn't respond on Hellopeter. i.e. pretend like Hellopeter doesn't exist.

[Zewp]

When I think of unethical business practices, Hellopeter ranks pretty damn high on the list. They effectively hold a company's PR image hostage & only allow the companies to respond after paying a "fee" to earn the right to respond. So as a company you have a choice of either leaving the bad PR there forever...and google will show it in results till the end of time or paying their "fee":



Not sure why extortion laws don't cover this, but they should.

Shysters #1 in my opinion.

And what's even worse, HelloPeter is often the site customers go to when they know they're in the wrong and didn't get things their way after talking to support or company representatives.