SA tech brands: compliments and complaints

[DUDE!@##$%%]

Firstly in my opinion these figures are completely off, very seldom does someone go on hellopeter to compliment a company and most people just want to rant and vent on their frustrations of dealing with large companies, I think the only way to really get the right ratios is to take all the products sold and all the complaints, assuming someone who hasnt complained is happy with their product as most people are.

 

[StevenC]

Working in retail, when people ask me about brands I tell them that the best form of a compliment is when no one comes in to tell you about it. When they come in to yell at you about it, different story! Fortunately, not so many of those

Everyone in this thread is talking common sense when they say that no one goes to compliment a product on a complaints site. I too use web reviews of products to spot any potential problems before I part with my money.

 

[Mantis]

Such as MTN..

lmao i can attest to that. back when i worked in a cellphone store (2001 - 2006) i used to hate calling MTN call centre on a saturday. waiting time used to be an hour before you got through to an operator. and then ... you had to still explain your problem

 

[kaybeach007]

Dumbest article I have EVER read. Is this dude a genius or what?????? NOBODY logs onto Hellopeter and compliments a brand, Hellopeter is for BITCHING about things!!!!!!! Truly inspirational, I have found a human being dumber than my Jack Russell (he attacks Boerbulls without hesitation)!!!!!!!

 

[Hellburn]

As it stands, it's a useless article. Though I guess we've already covered that I'd suggest some studying of market research and human behaviour theory?

Anyway, to me what would be interesting is if you could get hold of the number of product units shipped during that period. Just as an example: How many Samsung phones were sold versus Motorola? I expect that only with the unit numbers could you possibly come close to making some meaningful hypotheses, like number of complaints per unit sold.

That still doesn't tell the whole story though as one has to factor in peoples perceptions of a brand and buying decisions. If a person believes that a brand has lower than average quality, but purchases from them anyway because they're cheaper, they wont complain about the quality as they knowing bought into it. No complaints doesn't mean that they're a brilliant brand. It just means that they are consistent with, or better than, the brand image they project.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

 

[Mouse]

lmao i can attest to that. back when i worked in a cellphone store (2001 - 2006) i used to hate calling MTN call centre on a saturday. waiting time used to be an hour before you got through to an operator. and then ... you had to still explain your problem

When I ported from Virgin Mobile to MTN, VM had no trouble taking me off their network immediately, but MTN managed to screw the process up, yet I went to them to do the porting.
It took 5 weeks, with 3 complaints on HelloPeter, each one with a link to the previous complaint, before they fixed it.
And their reason for screwing up was that "they never received the required documents to complete the port"
I wonder how VM's porting department received it yet their own porting department didn't.

They eventually sent me a pdf that I printed filled out and signed then faxed it back to them, after that it was done quite fast.
Why can't that method be offered to everyone that has access to email and fax?

 

[rwenzori]

Yet another stupid article based on silly stats. Here Gary - another crappy news article.

 

[AylenS]

There is a lot of interesting psychology at play in the complaints area. A number of people use the complaint to angle for a better specc'ed product, not just a replacement. And if they think they're onto a good thing, the pressure mounts for other things, like vouchers. Of course hellopeter is a business, so companies need to pay Peter Cheales in order to turn the frown into a smiley I can understand why some companies balk at it... I agree that the stats need to somehow be standardised in some way in order to compare them, but I'm not convinced that compliments versus complaints achieves it properly.