During our everyday lives we all encounter times when we are in a situation with a business, either in a store or on an online buying scenario where we feel that things did not go the way that we expected them to. You know how it is, when maybe your customer service experience was poor, your food was cold, the shoes you just bought broke the second time you wore them, etc.
When this happens to you, what do you do? Are you the type of person to accept the experience and the waste of your hard earned money? Or are you like us and try and convey the scenario to the company involved so that it can be prevented from happening to other customers? Yes, we are letter writers. Since we were married many, many years ago we have written letters to all sorts of companies when we have encountered problems. (We also write letters when we experience an amazing interaction too. Those are fun letters to write!).
With the dawn of the Internet, Facebook, Twitter and other social sites it is easier than ever to voice your concerns to a corporation. We hardly ever mail a letter any more; we turn to the Internet. Many companies have employees that monitor their social pages on Facebook and Twitter especially to deal with issues that pop up with their customers. When you let them know about a problem they are trained to deal with it.
Just today we saved $56.48 by simply writing a short letter. How?
We rented a car from Budget Rental Cars for our trip this week to Ohio with our 4 nephews. We needed a large vehicle to accommodate 4 teen boys plus the two of us. We had until 9:30pm to return the vehicle without extra charges. We knew if we were 59 minutes or less late we would be charged the 1 hour fee. Anything over 60 minutes meant we would be charged for a whole day’s rental ($67.99). Due to circumstances beyond our control, we arrived 55 minutes past the deadline and we had accepted that we would have to pay the 1 hour fee. We did not realize the 1 hour fee was going to be $56.48! Seriously – isn’t that crazy?
We paid the fee (it was late, we were tired and we all wanted to get home), but it was bugging us that the fee was not only so high but that this information was not conveyed to us when we rented the car. We kind of figured the fee would not be as low as $2.83 ($67.99 divided by 24 hours) but never in our wildest dreams did we think it would be over $55. Kelli posted a short note on Budget’s Facebook on Friday (notice how the tone is friendly and not nasty…):
In just a few hours there was a response posted by the company directing me to their customer service team (and Kelli responded too):
Kelli then sent a short note to the customer service team at the email address provided and today received a nice letter from them saying that while their policy does allow them to charge 3/4 of the daily rental fee as the 1 hour penalty, they are going to issue a credit for the fee.
If we had not written the letter, we never would have received this credit. 1 letter, which took about 3 minutes to write = $56.48 credit.
This is only 1 example of the results you can get by writing to the company. We’ve had great luck getting faulty products replaced and getting gift cards to encourage us to return to restaurants when we have voiced our displeasure about a dining experience.
It is simple to do & we have some suggestions for you.
How to Write a Good Complaint Letter to a Company
- Be detailed; list the time you were in the store or the restaurant. If you had an order, give the order number information. Give names and times in your letter.
- Don’t be shy; find the company’s Facebook or Twitter page and post your concerns. You can usually find the company’s social media pages by going directly to their website.
- Be kind; no one likes to be spoken to in a threatening or mean manor. You get more with sugar than you do with spice.
- Acknowledge that you are a loyal customer/frequent buyer
- Thank them in advance for helping you or listening to your concerns
- If you receive a response, be sure to acknowledge that too. In the car rental example Kelli returned to Facebook to let them know she was very happy with their handling of the concern:
