More than ever, American consumers want revenge against companies taking advantage of them
Watchdog: Customers complain of bad experiences, and here are the words they use when complaining.
All right. I get it. You’re angry and want revenge against the company that did you wrong.
The Watchdog, based on the 19 years that I’ve been writing this column, has seen through anecdotal evidence that every year the plight of the U.S. consumer gets worse.
More complaints about ever poorer customer service. Government’s inability or unwillingness to protect ripped-off consumers. The advent of artificial intelligence and chatbots.
But this was anecdotal evidence. Now I have a couple of studies that give rise to real numbers from real people.
Preply analyzed brands on TrustPilot that have poor reviews to see which companies consumers should possibly avoid because these brands elicit the most emotional language from their customers.
Brands that provoke the least emotional language are TicketSales.com, Temu and Indeed.
Preply captured and analyzed the words people use to describe their anger and frustration. For the rest of this report, you’ll see four groups of italicized words that sadly show the mindset of the American consumer. They are like a dictionary of words consumers use to describe horrendous behavior.
Fees, beware, lied, stay away, worst customer service, fake, zero stars, no refund, do not trust, going out of business.
Right out of the gate, the name of the second study shows where we’re going with this. It’s called the National Consumer Rage Survey.
Scott Broetzmann, head of Customer Care Management and Consulting, runs the survey with the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. He told me that when he presented the survey results to companies 20 years ago, they did not recognize rage as a problem.
Scam, fraud, joke, thieves, worst company, garbage, nightmare, crooks, rip-off, my worst enemy.
In one telling statistic, the rage study shows the growth of customers actively seeking revenge against a company that treated them poorly. It grew from 32% in 1976, when a version of the survey first appeared, to 56% in 2017 to 66% in 2020. In the newest survey released last year, that grew to a record 74%. A thousand consumers participated.
Getting revenge is easier than ever. Because of that, Broetzmann says, “There’s a democratization of complaining.”
In only the past three years, people with serious problems with a company grew from 72% to 79%.
The percentage of complaining customers who posted their most serious problem on social media sites has more than doubled since 2020. Facebook led the pack with complaints, followed, in order, by Amazon, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Google reviews, TikTok, SnapChat, Yelp, Reddit and LinkedIn.
Forty-three percent said they raised their voice with a customer service rep.
