Some time ago I was asked by one of the Forum Moderators to have my say about this matter. This was substantially my reply, which I now offer as a basis for further discussion. "No names, no pack-drill" as they say!
First of all, I have to say that I’m uneasy about anyone using the Forum as a sounding board for complaints although there have been certain disreputable traders whose practises should be brought to the attention of the members, if only to stop anyone else falling prey to fraud. However, as it’s an open public forum then there’s no way you can prevent complaints from being made. You can’t expect the moderators to glue themselves to the monitor 24/7 to ensure fair-play. So we must accept that it’s going to happen, and a set of guidelines would serve at least to explain to an irate complainant why his particular complaint had been deleted or moderated.
THE RULES ACCORDING TO FULL LEATHER JACKET
The Complainant (aka TC) must himself have purchased a product from The Trader (aka TT) at the offset. We want to air only genuine complaints – not opinions. In our view you can only complain if you feel you’ve personally been treated badly and/or left out of pocket. For example, in one case a Forum member made derogatory remarks about a product which he hadn’t even bought and a trader with whom he had never done any other business. As a adjunct, we also don’t want third-party “complaints” e.g. the “my mate had one of those and it was rubbish” sort of thing.
TC must be a regular and long-standing forum member. (How long?? Discuss). We should avoid the situation where a pest or nuisance “customer” registers as a forum member solely to continue a dispute with a trader, but ramped up onto a public forum to intimidate or embarrass TT.
In every case there should be evidence that TT has had adequate opportunity to discuss and resolve the matter. To complain that a unit sent for repair on a Monday hadn’t been returned by the Friday is unreasonable, whereas a supplier who takes a customer’s money; fails to effect a repair for over seven months, and then is either abusive or just hangs up the phone on the customer deserves to be held up to the scrutiny of the Forum members. Of course, if the complaint hinges around TC being unable to contact TT or TT refusing to reply then my original point can’t apply!
TC must have complied with all written instructions, diagrams etc and also the terms of any guarantee.
The classic case of overloading an ESC or connecting something up incorrectly is fairly obvious, but there are other instances which can give rise to disputes. For example, I’ve been involved with a customer who admitted taking apart a user-unserviceable smoke generator “to see why it wasn’t working” and thereby breaking it (so we shall never know, and I couldn’t then return it to my supplier for credit). He then “slung it in the bin” and expected us to replace it FOC. In fact I did so, but then he started playing the “replacement never arrived” card. God forbid this sort of creature should ever get loose on the forum; there’s always the sanctimonious few who would actually take his side against the Great Satan that is the Model Boat Trade (billionaires, each and every one of us).
Any complaint which does not fully comply with the Forum rules regarding fairness, politeness and constructiveness (??) etc will be deleted without further comment.
We don’t want to entertain rants, unsubstantiated accusations or personal effrontery – that’s MY territory!!!!!!!
Over to you, people.
FLJ
