MOAN rangers to the rescue
Swizzed by small print or sold a dodgy sofa... and feel powerless? Don’t despair – these five crusaders reveal how to get your money back
FROM a cold cup of coffee to a grubby hotel room and packages that mysteriously disappear into the ether, we Brits, it seems, will put up with anything to avoid a fuss.
Our ‘stiff upper lip’ and British reserve makes us notoriously hopeless at complaining.
A study for the Financial Conduct Authority found 15 million people routinely miss out on refunds, replacement products or getting problems sorted because they lack the confidence to say something.
Three-quarters of consumers avoid making complaints, and even the younger generation will ‘stew’ on issues rather than speaking out, with more than a quarter of those surveyed saying they would feel too awkward.
But no more. A new breed of ‘ super complainers’ is emerging, who’ve become so good at standing up for their rights, they’ve turned their hobby into books, blogs, websites and even careers. Here, five ‘moan rangers’ speak about the secrets of their success.
MY SISTER CALLS ME HYACINTH BUCKET
JANE HAWKES, 43, is a part-time PA and an Independent Mystery Shopper. She runs the ladyjaney.co.uk blog and lives in Gloucestershire with her husband. She says: FOR years I have complained about the falling standards of customer service in everything from hotels, to airlines to shops.
My sister calls me Hyacinth Bucket because, like the Keeping Up Appearances character, I have such high standards. We put up with such mediocrity and I find it exasperating. It was my hairdresser who gave me the idea of a blog. I’d tell her all the things that were wrong with my holiday and how I made sure they were put right, and she’d laugh and say: ‘ You should write this down!’
Two years ago I did just that. no one incident sparked it; it was an accumulation of complaints. We’d built our own home, and in those seven years we only had three traders who didn’t let us down. I wrote my first blog called ‘Is it just moi?’ about poor customer service and it took off from there.
Companies should be challenged, and I’m always complaining. I never lose my temper — I’m always polite — but I’m not going to stand for shoddy service.
Thanks to my blog, I receive a lot of private messages via Twitter and help where I can, but never charge.
One lady had booked a trip to Berlin but then a close relative died so she wanted to change the booking. Holiday Inn express refused to budge, so I wrote a series of emails to them — I speak fluent German and Italian — and they agreed to a refund or a change of date.
A lot of the time effective complaining is about how you phrase the phone call or letter.
I’ve recently started Mystery Shopping for companies who want to hear how they can do better by getting people like me to visit their stores posing as ordinary customers. So I get paid to do what I love.
One manager of a bathroom store asked me to visit three bathroom showrooms, including one of his own, and report back honestly.
His was the worst. But he took the feedback on board and that will help his business.
JANE’S TOP TIP: Stick to the facts when complaining, leaving emotion aside.
I HELPED SOMEONE GET £45,400 COMPENSATION
SARA WILLIAMS is a retired City worker. She lives in South London and has two grown-up children. She runs the debt advice website debtcamel.co.uk. She says: WHen I retired, I started volunteering as a debt advisor at my local Citizens Advice.
There are some great debt websites run by charities, but they’re not easy to read. I wanted to set up a personal blog, written in conversational english which didn’t intimidate people with the jargon that banks, credit cards and payday lenders use.
I began the blog in 2013. I wanted debt in the title and camel came to me after I’d considered a few animals. Debt can give you the hump, and camels are determined, plod on to get to their goal but spit if they get angry!
At first, my blog was about simple debt and credit report questions. But in 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority told Wonga — the UK’s biggest payday lender at the time — that it had to compensate hundreds of thousands of customers.
People who take out payday loans are often desperate and can get caught in the ‘payday loan trap’: having to get another loan, as repaying the previous one has left them with too little money. I’ve heard of people taking out more than 40-plus loans from different lenders.
The interest rates were scandalous: 4,000-5,000 per cent APR.
I realised that a million people could be due some compensation and wrote a blog post about it with a template complaint letter to reclaim the interest they’d paid. That’s when things really took off.
I get dozens of comments every month from people who have used the letter of complaint successfully. One person told me it was the first time in her adult life she’d been out of debt. Two days ago I got a message from one gentleman who had received £45,411 in compensation from nine lenders. It’s very satisfying to think my blog has helped him.
SARA’S TOP TIP: Don’t be frightened, and keep your complaint simple. You don’t need to use legal terms, just say what is wrong and what you want them to do to put it right.
FORTY YEARS OF FIGHTING BACK
HELEN DEWDNEY, 50, is a consumer champion and author of How To Complain: The Essential Consumer Guide to Getting Refunds, Redress and Results. She lives with her partner Tony, 66, and their 11-year-old son in East London. She says: WHen I was 12 I wrote my first letter of complaint to a teen magazine who had published my letter but hadn’t sent me the £2 fee. They eventually paid up, but I’ve never forgotten how aggrieved I felt that they hadn’t apologised.
I’ve always loved empowering the most vulnerable in society. I worked as a children’s services consultant, fighting for young people’s rights, and I would always help friends and family with any complaints, too.
After I’d had my son, I set up my blog thecomplainingcow.co.uk to inform people about their rights. now I earn a living through my media work and help companies improve their complaint handling.
Complaining effectively is different to moaning, and people are too readily fobbed off by big businesses.
Few people know their rights. But the Consumer Rights Act 2015 is available online, and you don’t need to be a lawyer or clever to understand it and use it — you just need to be assertive.
For instance, if a courier hasn’t delivered an item, your contract is with the original company and it’s up to them to contact the courier, not you. But too many consumers end up dealing with it themselves. If you return faulty goods before they are 30 days old you can demand a full refund. Don’t let a store fob you off with a replacement or repair.
I’ve helped thousands of people gain redress. One person was awarded £600 from a travel agent after an initial offer of only £125. Another got £ 2,000 back for a faulty sofa. I was particularly pleased when one of the people on my Facebook page returned her faulty second-hand car and got a full refund.
Research shows that people are complaining more but it’s taking longer to get a resolution. Some sectors are worse than others, and I hear constant complaints about telecoms companies in particular. It
will be interesting to see what happens with Brexit. EU laws protect so many consumers and leaving may affect our rights. But I’ll be keeping people up-to-date and fighting for them all the way.
HELEN’S TOP TIP: Always write (don’t phone unless it’s urgent) so you have a record of evidence.
PARKING WARDENS, WATCH OUT!
Scott Dixon, 49, is the author of How to complain — the consumer Guide to Resolve complaints And Motoring Disputes. He lives in Edinburgh. Scott says: I gEt so much satisfaction in fighting for the underdog.
I’ve only got an A-level in law but my background is in financial services, so I have a natural ability to cut through jargon and find loopholes. I’m self-taught, but I’ve helped hundreds — if not thousands — of people since my book came out in 2016.
I decided to start writing it in 2015 and had a lifetime of experiences to back it up. Parking tickets and appeals are one of my many specialities. Councils and local authorities are exploiting us and raking in millions of pounds from motorists every year. More than a quarter of us simply pay up without even appealing.
Councils try to frustrate claims by using jargon, and most people accept the fine because they don’t want to risk losing in court. But it’s time other people made a stand.
Recently, a lady contacted me to say she had been fined £60 for parking in a loading bay on a Bank Holiday Monday while she bought a tin of paint. She could drive but was on crutches so couldn’t walk far. But in the five minutes she had been in the shop, an overzealous parking warden had slapped a ticket on her car.
She didn’t think she had a chance of challenging the ticket. But I pointed out that she was actually using the loading bay for its intended purpose: to load.
Any reasonable person would not expect to be hit by a parking fine on Easter Monday, when most parking laws are not enforced, and the signs on the road did not clearly state that parking restrictions were in place.
As well as my book, I run a blog called and a thegrumpygit.com Facebook group called the Complaints Resolver. I’ve helped consumers claim back more than £ 200,000 from car dealerships, the most recent of which was for £23,000.
this consumer had bought a car that had numerous faults and issues and the garage was fobbing them off and hiding behind ‘legalese’. Yet all the customer’s complaints fell within the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and, by using my book, they successfully got every penny back.
SCOTT’S TOP TIP: Perseverance is key to success. If you are struggling to resolve your complaint with one piece of legislation, look at alternatives.
I WAS MADE AN MBE FOR COMPLAINING
clAiRE tuRnHAM, MBE, is 52 and a mother-of-four from oxfordshire. She set up the Victims of Viagogo Facebook page and has become an awardwinning campaigner against industrial-scale ticket touting. She says: two years ago, I wanted to surprise my children with tickets to an Ed Sheeran concert. the price advertised on ticket website Viagogo was £263. So I was incensed when £1,421 was taken from my account without my consent.
I logged onto twitter to voice my outrage and other fans said they’d had the same experience.
After I got my money back, people said: ‘ why don’t you leave it there?’ But other consumers were being treated unfairly. I wanted to show my children that it’s important to help others stand up to injustice, even if you’re David facing goliath.
I set up a Facebook group called Victims of Viagogo to help others in need.
I have heard countless stories of children left utterly distraught because parents couldn’t face telling them how much money they’d lost when buying touted tickets.
People have been hospitalised, relationships have ended and jobs have been lost through the ongoing stress of dealing with Viagogo. one young woman’s dream of seeing
her favourite band was ruined for ever. She had £2,800 taken from her account, which put her overdrawn and took months to repay. She became so anxious about paying her rent that she developed seizures, which she hadn’t had since childhood. She lost her driving licence and is on strong medication, possibly for the rest of her life.
Fans were spending thousands of pounds on concerts, sporting matches or musicals but getting turned away at the door because their ticket was invalid and had been sold on Viagogo in breach of the original ticket terms and conditions.
Using my own experience of getting a refund, I initially helped customers successfully claw back £50,000 in the first few months. Remarkably, the group now has thousands of members in 62 countries, including Australia and New Zealand.
In March 2017, I gave evidence at the UK parliamentary inquiry into ticket abuse and teamed up with FanFair Alliance — a group of artists and promoters who campaign against ticket touting.
I wrote a free self-help refund guide for fans and more than £1 million has now been reclaimed.
EACH refund has been fought for, including one of our most recent cases, a claim of £3,992 for eight invalid tickets to the upcoming Rugby World Cup in Japan.
It’s been an incredible journey. Singing star Ed Sheeran and his team have been especially supportive. I joined his 2018 UK stadium tour and was at each of his 18 shows where thousands of people turned up — unwittingly — with invalid tickets. We advised each fan how to claim a refund and offered them the chance to buy a replacement ticket at the fair price.
I’ve recently been made an MBE, and I’m honoured and humbled to find out it’s the people I’ve helped who nominated me. I’m thrilled that we’ve made such an extraordinary difference to so many ordinary people.
CLAIRE’S TOP TIP: Make your complaint directly to the ticket site and give them the chance to put it right. If you’re still not happy, contact us, contact your bank, reach out via social media and follow our free refund guide on the
fanfairalliance.org website. We know it works.
n A SPOKESPERSON for Viagogo said: ‘As a company, Viagogo strives to ensure our users have a positive experience and are protected when making purchases through our website. We know Claire acts with the very best of intentions, but we fundamentally disagree with the persistent attacks of our platform.
‘One of our founding principles was to bring an end to the wild west ticket tout black market which was unsafe and unregulated. We now provide a platform that offers a guarantee that in the extremely rare circumstance where a buyer has a bad experience they receive a replacement ticket or a full refund.’