South Africans are renowned for complaining around the braai about bad service, but we tend to be apathetic about taking our complaints to the companies that deliver the poor service.
One of the reasons is that it is often a hassle, and even if you want to complain it is not always clear whom you should approach, especially if you are dealing with a large organisation.
For example, complaining to the teller at your local Spar supermarket is unlikely to get you anywhere.
www.Getclosure.co.za is a website that takes the hassle out of complaining by channelling your online complaint directly to the participating suppliers.
This means that your complaint goes immediately to the right person who is in a position to help, so you avoid being pushed from pillar to post.
Having personally tested the site with a complaint regarding Pick n Pay, I am very impressed.
My complaint was that at a particular store where I shop, the tellers are not all equipped with chip-reading devices.
This meant every time someone came to pay with a PIN and chip card, there would be some poor harassed woman running up and down between the tellers with the portable device. This caused significant delays in the queues, especially at month-end.
Within 24 hours I had received an email from Pick n Pay that my complaint had been received.
Shortly after that the store manager phoned to explain the situation and that devices would be installed by the end of November.
I even received an email from the office of the chief executive explaining the technical reasons behind the delay in rolling out the devices.
This is how companies can use the opportunity of a negative experience to impress the socks off their customers.
Any company would rather have you complain to it than to your friends, so it can resolve the issue.
Suppliers are expected to send an initial response within 24 hours of receiving a complaint.
If they do not, Getclosure will send them a reminder to respond.
You get to rate the supplier and the way it handled the complaint and these statistics are used to rate the various companies.
What I particularly liked about this site compared to another consumer site, www.helloPeter.co.za, is that the complaints are not published on the site.
This stops it becoming a place for personal grudges and rather provides consumers with an effective channel for getting their complaints resolved.
The site also lists contact details for all the various agencies and consumer bodies, so it is a one-stop shop if you are looking to take an issue further up the line.
The downside
The one negative is that some suppliers such as Woolworths have not bought into the service.
Woolworths says it prefers to deal through its own customer care line rather than other channels.
Although one can understand that argument from a company point of view, it is not certain that it always works for the consumer.
About 80% of consumers using Getclosure have already tried, unsuccessfully, to resolve a complaint directly with a supplier.
This is often because they have raised the issue with the wrong person.
A friend lodged a complaint about Woolworths on Getclosure for a problem he had not been able to resolve at store level and no one in the store had referred him to the Woolworths customer care line so he was unaware of it.
It is easier for consumers to be aware of one or two consumer sites than the complaint channels of all the various suppliers.
Although not dealing with the complaint directly through Getclosure, Woolworths has stated they will make contact to resolve the issue.
How consumers can complain more effectively