I was a supporter of the Hellopeter website until I saw the article related to this thread. I naively beleived that the site was paid for through advertising and they companies where able to respond as freely as consumers where able to complain. I honestly believe that having a complaint posted on Hellopeter or any similar site is suffiecent "punishment" for bad service from the small businesses. Against larger monopolies such as Telskum or Monochoice it might not be.
Ironicly about 30 min after reading the article and deciding to avoid using Hellopeter and more, our marketing manager came through and told me of a post regarding us and asking how do we respond to it.
Here is the senerio... we have some 12 000 - 120 000 units comming off production on any day depending on orders. One of those units, happened to make it past the quality checking and got to a customer and broke after a few days. She took it back the store that sold it and it was immediatly swapped out. It was the first time she had purchased one of our products and she was happy with the replacement, but felt she had to complain about our poor products on hellopeter. This was one of the very very few units that should not have passed inspection but actually did. It was our first and only complaint on Hellopeter... no tell me... is it justified that we should have to pay R13k just to respond to this one customer who was already dealt with? I must also mention that she purchased the product from a retail store and was dealt with by the store.. the only connection to us is that the product was made by us, so I cannot comment on the treatment she received replacing the item, but she does not appear to unhappy with that.