Consumer complaint

This article is about reports filed by consumers who are dissatisfied with a business transaction and/or interaction. For the consumers in biology, see Heterotroph.

The Complaint tablet to Ea-nāṣir may be the oldest known written customer complaint.[1]

A consumer complaint or customer complaint is "an expression of dissatisfaction on a consumer's behalf to a responsible party" (London, 1980). It can also be described in a positive sense as a report from a consumer providing documentation about a problem with a product or service.[2]

Consumer complaints are usually informal complaints directly addressed to a company or public service provider, and most consumers manage to resolve problems with products and services but it sometimes requires persistence. An instrumental complaint is a complaint made to a person or organization that could take some action and bring about a specific remedy. An expressive complaint is a complaint made for the purpose of expressing feelings, without any realistic chance of anything being done. Most online complaints are expressive complaints.[3]

  1. ^ Hyken, Shep (April 23, 2015). "Oldest Customer Service Complaint Discovered: A Lesson from Ancient Babylon". Forbes. Retrieved October 23, 2023.
  2. ^ "What Is a Consumer Complaint?". Wisegeek.com. Retrieved December 9, 2011.
  3. ^ Wells, Pete (February 5, 2019). "How to Complain at a Restaurant? Just Ask Our Critic". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 23, 2020.