(originally) written by Albert O Hirschman
As part of my Open University degree, I studied Maths, Computer Science, History and Political History - the Open University was (and probably still is) a great place to study. My last year of six years of part-time study included reading the 'reader; called Exit, Voice & Loyalty.
You need to be reminded that I read this nearly fifteen years ago, but it is still as relevant as it was then.
In summary, and from memory.
A service is as good as the providers. If you do not like the service, you have a choice. You either complain (voice), or stick with this service through loyalty to a company, or you just close the service down, i.e. exit usage.
I have used this to my benefit (or not) since that time, i.e. for the last fifteen years. It often pays to complain, and a decent company will want to keep it's customers. A good example of this is Virgin Media, they gave me a long period of FREE internet usage after complaining about the abysmal service at the time. Several years later, I have signed up with their service again because of this.
A bad example is lunarpages.com, a cheap web provider. They deleted a site several times through their incompetency, yet never really apologised. Every time you cancel a service, there is the usual offer of a cheaper service for a period of time. It is cheap, and basically a nasty service. More recently, I cancelled services with lunarpages.com and then found the payment for this cancelled service on my credit card. If it is a current credit card, then an odd pound in exchange rates is NOT worth complaining about.
More recently, i.e. about eight months ago; I began receiving calls for the company SKY, every evening, without fail. This was because an unused credit card supplied by themselves in conjunction with Barclaycard had changed from a small credit to a small deficit - this eventually cost me about £40 sterling in charges for a £1 deficit.
The story is:
I cancelled a site with lunarpages.com, they decided to charge me anyway. They later credited me with this sum, but due to exchange rates, I was charged more. Sky & Barclaycard, despite being contacted, refused to repay these charges. It cost me about £40 in charges on a £1 deficit due to the ignorance of lunarpages.com, SKY and Barclaycard.
During this period, Barclays decided that they would debit my Barclays account without my authorisation. This pissed me off BIG time, and I will never deal with Barclays again, or SKY, or lunarpages. This is my story.
Basically, the BIG wasters were a bunch of losers in America called lunarpages.com who hate to lose customers due to the credit crunch, they advised their advisers to 'do anything' to keep a customer even if it included fraudulently charging their credit card. A big plus to lunarpages.com fraudulent activity was the total fraudulent activity of Barclaycard and its other services.
I can only say I will never do business with Barclays again because of their fraudulent practices.
Kevan
Much more advice to follow - whether good or bad: