How you handle complaints can help minimize damage

Sooner or later, a customer is going to have a complaint. Even if you have done nothing wrong and the complaint is ridiculous, how you respond may dictate how much pain you find yourself in. I always advise my clients to follow these rules:

• Tell the truth, not what you think someone wants to hear.

• Calm down.

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• If you are given a certain period of time to respond, take that time – do not respond quickly or from emotion.

• Have a neutral person – a lawyer, a friend who is not an employee or even a total stranger you meet through Craigslist – review your response and temper it.

• Review all relevant documents.

• Don’t say anything that can incite the complaining customer or give him/her “ammunition.”

• Respond in the most objective and businesslike manner possible.

• If a reasonable solution is proposed, take it even if you don’t like it (or make a reasonable counterproposal).

When my clients have followed these rules, the dispute soon resolves and they can proceed with their business. Not following the rules can lead to litigation or further action by agencies like attorneys general offices that are quite adept and aggressive in pursuing consumer complaints.

Here’s an example of a situation in which the company violated every one of these rules. It is not a client; I am the consumer.

Having grown tired of commuting between Houston and Northern Colorado, I decided to move to Northern Colorado. So I hired a moving company that I thought would do a good job. They did not communicate with me at all, and when I would call them, they just told me things I wanted to hear. If it had stopped there, it would have just annoyed me and not led to a dispute. But it didn’t.

Two things caused the dispute: They charged me $300 extra to make three custom crates for expensive oil paintings but shoved all three in one cardboard box; and they didn’t deliver my mattress.

The truck driver called and told them the mattress was missing. When I had not heard from them for more than 24 hours, I sent a message. They said they’d look and let me know within four days. Under the contract, if they had lost my mattress I would file a claim and be reimbursed 60 cents per pound for it. But it’s hard to lose a mattress – similar to losing a small elephant. And I did not hear back from them.

Following my own rule never to represent myself, I had my lawyer fax them a letter asking for reimbursement for the mattress and reimbursement for the crating fee and minor damage to the picture frames, plus a little something for him – a total of $1,200. At the same time, I asked the Better Business Bureau to get involved. We gave them seven days to respond.

They responded immediately. “The crate that we custom created for the client protected his pictures as you mentionted [sic] . . . in a regular case I would have bought the client a new mattress instead of the one missing . [sic](even though client released the carrier to a maximum liaibty [sic] of .60 [sic] cents per pound). but [sic] in this case because of the false accusations to the BBB . . .”

Subsequently, they thought better of this and offered $500 for the mattress. But when, living by my motto to “trust everyone but brand your cattle,” my attorney faxed a confirming letter for them to sign acknowledging their offer, the offer changed to $500 to resolve everything.

What did they do that caused matters to escalate? They didn’t tell me the truth. They didn’t calm down. They didn’t take time to respond. They didn’t have a neutral person review the response (including fixing grammar and typographical errors).

The response was hardly businesslike. Based upon what it will cost them now to respond to the Texas Attorney General, my original offer was very reasonable.

So, again, the question is, how do you handle customer complaints?

Alan F. Blakley is a lawyer with CR MILES PC in Fort Collins. He may be reached at afblakley@crmiles.com.