For the 12th year in a row, ID theft is the number-one complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced recently. It’s followed by the usual shenanigans, including debt collection schemes, bogus sweepstakes, and bank fraud.
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We’re living in an era of “the customer is never right” and infinite phone trees and impersonal form denials by e-mail. Hundreds of thousands of grievances are lodged against American corporations every day. Some of them are successful; many aren’t.
Given all that, wouldn’t it be helpful to know how many people complain about your clothing store, Internet service provider, bank or cellular phone company? If you had that information, couldn’t you make a more informed purchasing decision?
Most companies count the number of complaints they receive at some level. They don’t share it with anyone, unless the law forces them to.
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By now, my friends, you must know that these “in” box polls have a certain randomness and statistical irrelevance to them.
The math police came after me after totaling the online travel agency complaints a few days ago. They also frowned on my analysis of fee complaints.
But is that going to stop me? Oh no.
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Expedia. That’s according to a survey of my authoritative email “in” box, which contains seven years of complaint data from travelers. Coming in second? Travelocity, followed by Orbitz.
Alright, my methods may not be completely scientific (after all, my email contains all of my correspondence, not just complaints) but it’s a pretty good indicator.
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What kind of a complainer are you?
Maybe you’re the squeaky wheel — the guest who keeps writing back over and over, even after you’ve been told “no” in a dozen different ways. Or maybe your grievances fall into the “special circumstances” category — you’re sick, you’re broke, you’re having a bad year.
Perhaps you’re a name-dropper, copying a vice president or CEO on every customer service inquiry to ensure it receives the proper attention.
You could be the litigious type: “Give me what I want, or I’ll sue.”
At the right time, these are all perfectly reasonably ways to complain to a travel company. At the wrong time, they can doom your customer service request to failure at the hands of a dreaded form response.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals’ annual conference in Atlanta. After my speech, I witnessed a surprisingly lively and candid discussion among the participants, all of which were customer service managers in the travel industry. The topic? How to value your customer. Specifically, how do you prioritize requests from customers based on their elite status?
During our debate, the audience referred to the kinds of complaints they get, and much to my surprise, I found I had categorized them in a similar way. You need to know about these groupings, because being in one or another can make a big difference in how your grievance is handled.
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When the nation’s third-largest airline stops taking complaints by phone, what does that mean? Yesterday’s news that United Airlines would shutter an Indian call center that took complaints after a flight, telling customers to send a letter or email instead, has a lot of air travelers scratching their heads. I count myself among them.
“Why?” asked reader Jonathan Yarmis. “Instead of asking why people aren’t satisfied with the phone response and fixing it, they just say, ‘Hey, our phone line sucks. Let’s cancel it.’”
United says it is able to respond better to customers who write, since they often include more detail, making it possible to provide a more specific response. And it has a point. I almost always encourage people who have a problem with any airline to write instead of calling.
Asking people to write instead of call is not necessarily a bad idea. But should it be their only choice?
What about the many passengers who still don’t have access to email? Sure, they can still mail a letter, but response times are considerably slower. These folks on the other side of the digital divide already pay more for their airline tickets because they have to shell out an extra booking fee for using the phone. Are they being punished for not owning a PC? It looks like that.
I remember the last airline that tried this. Skybus told its passengers not to call it, but to write. Eventually, it stopped responding to emails. Then it closed down.
I’m not sure if the same fate will befall United, although my colleague Peter Greenberg seems to think the airline is on a path to oblivion.
I also wonder if this means the same thing for all United customers. Will the super-elite Global Services frequent fliers have to put their complaints in writing to the United employees who were trained to serve them, too? Somehow, I doubt it.
(Let’s not be too hard on United. Remember, Southwest Airlines, which is said to have some of the best customer service in the airline industry, doesn’t accept email. How retro!)
United is doing the right thing by encouraging its customers to use email to communicate with it. It’s more efficient, faster and in most respects better than a phone call. But unplugging the customer complaints line may be taking it too far.
The number of travel and timeshare complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission nearly doubled last year, jumping from 6,712 cases to 14,903 cases. As a whole, the travel category rose from 12th to 9th place, accounting for roughly 2 percent of all consumer grievances received by the federal agency.
The 2007 figures, released today by the FTC, show identity theft remains the top category for consumer complaints, accounting for 258,427 cases, or roughly 32 percent of grievances. That’s up slightly from last year’s 246,035 complaints, but a smaller overall percentage of the complaints received by the agency.
Consumers reported fraud losses totaling more than $1.2 billion, according to the FTC. The median monetary loss per person was $349.
Albany, NY, drew the most FTC complaints in 2007, with 642 grievances, or 575.8 complaints per 100,000 people. Greeley, Colo., came in second, with 1,359 grievances, or 573.8 complaints per 100,000 people.
Although no reason was given for the spike in travel complaints, 2007 was one of the worst years for airline service in recent memory.
Here’s the entire 2007 report as a PDF.
