7 replies to this topic

[SAM]

I am currently undertaking my annual review of last year's complaints.
While sitting here with them in front of me, I noticed a couple of suspicious complaints.

It looks as if peolpe have started talking about compensation and got their freinds involved.

Is there anywhere that records serial complainants (?!?) so we can look up any suspicious complaints?

Nadine.

[Simon]

I know what you mean Nadine.

"Err I opened de packet of biscuits and half a brick jumped out rendering me unconscious."

Kerching! A £6 voucher please…not a bad return for a quick letter and a stamp.

In the UK there are thousands of food companies and if the complainant contacts them direct rather than contacting the retailer, and they keep good records, then I'm quite sure this kind of criminal behaviour could go undetected for a long time and prove to be quite a lucrative hobby…for an Anorak.

I don't know for sure but I doubt there is a central database for tracing these evil felons. It's also unlikely that competitors will share their complaint data. There may also be some data protection implications. The only suggestion I can make is sort the complaints database by postcode / surname and look for patterns or failing that just act on your instincts and send da boyz round.

Regards,
Simon

[Puzzle]

Interestingly,

The chap who hosted my auditor transition training had a weird (norma?) story of the other side of this.

He received a dodgy product (not sure what) sent it back and received a 'tenner'.

When he called and enquired what the analysis of the fault was he got that wonderful reply...........................................................................
....................'I don't know, I just sent the tenners out and file the complaint'

Now that perpetuates the false claims syndrome.

And the poor lass wondered why she was so busy send out hush money.



I believe there are some people out in civvy street actually earning a living doing this sort of thing. It was the same wit the insurance companies until they actually started sharing basic data.

[SAM]

Producing Gin and Vodka here,
we get some classics!!

"I drank the bottle and it made me ill"

"I drank the bottle and it didn't make me ill"

"The Vodka was not to everyones taste, so it ruined my engagment party"

The serial complainer we had managed to get three cheques off us, but all to different addresses. When I rang the supermarket that sold the product they had also received a further 5 complaints from the same two names.

Nadine.

[rheath]

I supply industry to industry - as such do not get quite the same issues but we still suffer from the serial complainer syndrome -

One of our larger customers has a 'packaging controller' - their job, surprisingly is to control packaging and all the issues associated with it..

Effectively if there are no complaints this person has no job

This customer accounts for over 30% of our actual complaints - for over 80% of these complaints we receive a 1 sentence complaint reason with no further description or samples or product returns.

This means that we cannot investigate or eliminate these problems - our 'poor' complaints performance seriously skews our vendor rating score to the extent that we have had European purchasing directors contact our National CEO

In 2003 we experienced a step change in plant quality improvement, introduced a new process that completely eliminated the opportunity for this complaint to happen again - interestingly we still receive complaints from this customer on this issue that physically cannot happen any more.

All these facts have been relayed back to our customers management team - what do you think their response to us was??? Our statistics show you are a poor supplier (even though we supplied over 30 Million units of product and we have had 4000 returned and scrapped - 133PPM or 0.013%)

Any help on where we go from here

Edited by rheath, 08 April 2004 - 02:59 PM.

[Puzzle]

My own personal one...

In a previous company we would supply mouldings to a UK electronics company (they shall remain nameless)

At the initiation of the contract it was agreed to make one delivery a week against their forward schedule. This we would deliver on the wednesday for them to process and start using for the following week!! Nice and simple.

I would get reams of reject notes for overdeliveries

It took a while, but I worked out what was happening.

The @@@***s were too lazy to look on th epallet for what was wanted and would phone our sales chap (who was extremely helpful) and he would take what they wanted, deliver it on a manual delivery note, and when they finally broke the pallet we had delivered the parts taht were delivered on that were showing as previously delivered.

They flatly refused this situation.

So, I went to visit them, as a response to another complaint (their fault again) and I had discussed where the pallets were delivered with our delivery driver.

When I had beaten them severely about the problem that had originally dragged me down to them, I wandered off to where our deliveries were. And promptly created a rather large disturbance.

I had the Purchasing head, the MD, the QM and the QE all stood in front of me, with the evidence.

Rejection for over delivery did not happen again!! And I had the figures for all the previous rejections removed from our figures. They hated me after that.

[Simon]

Any help on where we go from here

Packaging Controller -> <- Richard

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Simon

[rheath]

The thought had crossed my mind, oh well - I'll just have to grin and bear it - they are paying my wages after all