The Problem with HelloPeter

HelloPeter.com is a web site dedicated to consumer complaints, but it is by no means perfect. I have had successes and failures with the "Companies who Respond", and have noticed some major weaknesses in the system. I think that part of the problem is that Peter needs to "think out of the box" and realise that some of his customers are gaming the system and frustrating his users.
There is also the question of forcing companies to pay for the right to respond. Many critics have said this is tantamount to blackmail, and in some respects I agree. Firsly, there is a R375 fee to register. Then you pay for each complaint received, on some kind of scale that is not published, although the first 4 complaints/compliments per year are free. Thereafter you have to pay for the right to respond.
The problem is that in many cases the response is unhelpful or downright misleading. "We are investigating and will get back to you" is insulting to the person who lodged the complaint, especially when they never get back to you. HelloPeter provides no facility to report this kind of activity. And don't try to complain on HelloPeter about HelloPeter: it's a farce and if you do it too often or in public they block your account.
Another way for a supplier to game the system is to answer the wrong question. Many times I have complained about unsolicited calls or SMS messages, and demanded to know: "Where did you get my number?" In most cases the reply is "We have removed your name from our database". I'm sorry, but that isn't an answer to the question! It says to me: "We refuse to divulge this information because by doing so we would be admitting to breaking the law." Alternatively, "We are too stupid or arrogant to answer the question so we'll say what we think you want to hear instead." Again, you can't report this, although you can try lodging the complaint again. This can become an endless loop.
Peter needs to allow the customer to engage in a public dialogue with the supplier, perhaps allowing several replies from both sides, and allowing each party to rate (in public) the relevance and helpfulness of the other's reply. Also, Peter needs to allow the party being complained about the right of reply. Delay the registration fee until after the first 4 responses, to give your potential customers a chance to see how well (or badly) the system works. Peter, are you listening to your customers? Hello? Peter?

Companies made to pay up to clear their names on consumer website

Claim that businesses are charged exorbitant fees to answer complaints
From Reporter.co.za: "I have come across the most novel of moneymaking schemes that I’ve come seen in a long time - the beneficiary in this case being hellopeter.com. This one really takes the cake.
"Hellopeter.com is a consumer website, and in the words of the owner, a fellow called Peter Cheales is “searching for service excellence”.
"Let me give you a bit of background as to the details of our experience with hellopeter.com.
"Hellopeter.com is a consumer website that claims to receive six million hits per month. If you have received bad service from someone you can go to the website, www.hellopeter.com and lay a complaint. Recently a malicious complaint, devoid of some crucial facts, was laid against the company that I work for on hellopeter.com.
"The client was in breach of contract, but conveniently omitted this fact. As soon as the complaint went live we were sent a link via email which directed us to the page on their website where the article was displayed. Our company was asked if we would like to respond, to which we replied with a definite yes.
"We wanted to point out some obvious information that would have nullified the clients’ complaint. In order for us to post our response we needed to follow another link, which in turn led us to a page where we needed to fill in our details, upon which we were promised a response.
"After almost a week they responded, which means in the vicinity of close to one million hits would have been registered for that period.
"The response, however, was the truly shocking part. In order for us to respond we need to be registered with hellopeter.com as what they term, “A company that responds”. In order to achieve this status we need to subscribe, and the minimum period is one year. The cost is R13 500! This is the lowest category of subscription, and if you are a regular responder you need to take an upgraded package, which can be as much as R60 000 per year.
"Despite the fact that the complaint was untruthful, in order for us to clear our name would cost us between R13 500 and R60 000. Now I’ve tried looking at this from various angles but it still pretty much looks like a mass extortion scheme, especially since they do not even take care to validate the complaints that they post on their site.
"Their means of handling it means literally anyone can go and say anything against your company, whether it’s true or not, and then you have to pay a large sum of money to defend yourself.
"Just imagine: you just started out with your own company. Now everyone who has ever attempted starting his own company will quickly point out to you how you need to stretch your pennies when you are still establishing yourself.
"Then along comes your jealous neighbour or even a competitor, sucks something out of his thumb and posts it on hellopeter.com. Immediately you are set back at least R13 500 and that’s excluding all the negative marketing you will have to put up with.
"Just imagine starting out your new company and you do not have that R13 500. What would happen then? Would one then just need to accept that a website that receives six million hits per month brands your company as crap? This could break an upstart!
"I think the operators of the website should be ashamed of the means in which they generate their revenue.
Note: A check of the website confirms that "if you want to respond to comments about your business or practice, you need to subscribe and become a Company Who Respond". The benefits of joining include being sent an email notification whenever a comment is posted about your company and the contact details of the consumer."

When you sign up to HelloPeter, you are presented with the following statement: "The aim of this site is simple: to increase service levels of our suppliers. Any constructive criticism about any supplier is welcome. Compliments are gratefully accepted. But any comments that contain hurtful or racial statements will be deleted immediately. My site is not designed as a platform for vicious slander - it is designed as a highly sophisticated and economical way for Companies Who Respond to deliver the service that they profess to provide."

My comment: I use HelloPeter on an occasional basis because it seems to be the only way to "get through" to big companies when you have a complaint. This article takes a different view, and I must say I think it has a point. There are a lot of flaws with the HelloPeter system, especially the fact that you can't engage in dialog with the company once you've logged your initial complaint. Since Peter Cheales responds extremely badly to criticism, this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Today I logged a complaint to bring his attention to this article. The complaint was deleted, and my account login no longer works. I can't decide if this was some kind of hissy fit or just coincidence. Time will tell.

HelloPeter.com's Peter Cheales insults his own customers

Naughty Naughty! Rule #1 of Customer Service is "The Customer is Always Right". And when you make a living teaching others about customer service, it pays to practice what you preach. That's why I was quite stunned to read Peter Cheales' response to my complaint:

"Sunday afternoon and I really can't be bothered to respond to childish drivel. Regards - Peter"

It's hardly surprising. The poor guy has updated the design of his web site, and his customers hate it, by a huge margin of 62% against, 31% for. In addition, the web site design company is taking ages to fix a simple colour scheme problem, and the line breaks don't seem to be working. It must have been a tough week.
In a related post, Peter refers to my complaint in these generous terms:

"... Been working on contrasts and legibility - feedback has been harsh, but beneficial.
Re comments from abusers - they come, and fortunately they go when they find someone / something else to criticise. You'll find that they're the sort of people who'll never put themselves in the firing line - just wait to criticise others. In the office, we refer to them as ab-losers, but don't tell anyone."

All the success in dealing with complaints must have gone to his head. The sad thing is that two simple mistakes have made a big difference to customer perceptions of his web site:

• The change in design has made it difficult to read
• The lack of response to the change in design has made him seem intransigent, which is worse.

Of course, it doesn't help when you insult your customer, however misunderstood or provoked. I guess the only redeeming feature about the site at all is that some of the companies do actually respond to the complaints posted there. That's why I like it. I guess I'll just have to go through the hassle of using the site to get the desired response. No one said complaining about poor service was easy.

HelloPeter web site edits its own complaints

It's incredible. I filed a complaint with HelloPeter complaining that the site was unreadable and it looks disabled. I included a link to the blog article (below) in my complaint.
Now the link has been removed from the article. Do companies have the right to do this, or is it only HelloPteter employees who can do this? I wonder what they are going to do with my new complaint, which refers to this article and the previous one. We'll see.
I wonder how long it will take them to notice that all the new lines have been removed, because they aren't replacing the CR LF sequence with the HTML BR command.

New complaint | Original complaint

HelloPeter web site disabled by its own colour scheme

It's amazing how quickly a bad colour scheme can ruin a web site. What's more amazing is how slow these guys are at fixing the problem. Surely it can't be that difficult to change a few colour selections in a Cascading Style Sheet? It doesn't even take that long!
It turns out that the web development was done by "Bonzai Web Design" who can't spell Bonsai, even though they have a tree on their web page. Presumably they got the name from the Bonzai Linux distribution. They also don't know that the plural of "site" is "sites" not "site's", but what do you expect from a company whose reputation is about to be sunk along with its client?
Judging by the voting (see results in image above) the regular customers hate it. I'm sure the companies who receive complaints think its brilliant because no one can read the complaints. The mind boggles.
Grey text may be a cool fashion statement, but it's not particularly readable, and is the universally accepted colour for "greyed out" or "disabled" features. The choice of colour thus gives the instant impression of a site that doesn't work, or is somehow disabled. To make matters worse, all the adverts are still displayed in the usual loud colours, so the overall effect is that the ads are highlighted and the complaint text is ignored. What were they thinking?
Update 25 Jan 2007: it turns out that the HelloPeter.com style sheet was "borrowed" from www.dinersclub.co.za. The Bonzai web team left a comment in the style sheet that reads "/* dinersclub css */", and the design of the Diners Club site looks similar, if not better. Given that grey and blue are part of the Diners Club corporate logo, their site works. They also have a FAQ section, which is missing from the HelloPeter site.

HelloPeter.com new site poll results

Go Banking Ignores Privacy Law

Today I was called by some marketing drone from Nedbank's Go Banking call centre, offering me a credit card. I have already informed Nedbank that I do not wish to receive any marketing calls, yet they don't want to listen. That makes the call illegal, if not downright annoying. I have complained again, with reference number "FI258111 - Jan 8 2007 11:32AM"
Are these people so dimwitted that they don't realise the legal implications of continually phoning me? They have already lost out on a home loan from me, and at this rate they'll never get any business from me in future either.
Why illegal? The ECT Act makes it illegal for any business to make any kind of unsolicited communication when the (potential) customer has already indicated that he does not wish to receive such communications. Section 45 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, no 25 of 2002. states the following:

45. (1) Any person who sends unsolicited commercial communications to consumers, must provide the consumer—­
(a) with the option to cancel his or her subscription to the mailing list of that person; and
(b) with the identifying particulars of the source from which that person obtained the consumer's personal information, on request of the consumer.

When will the banks learn? I guess in the next decade or so, once they have had to explain to their shareholders why the Marketing Director had to go to jail for a year. Marketing Departments spend so much time talking that they don't listen. That's why the Nedbank Marketing department doesn't publish its email address.
Update 9-Jan-2007: Go Banking responded to the HelloPeter complaint, and have apologised. It remains to be seen whether the rest of Nedbank gets the message.

HelloPeter complaint

Sanlam needs a dose of Reality BEFORE they give out my personal contact details

I have a retirement annuity with Sanlam, and the broker who deals with me, Phil Ryan, is a good financial advisor who has served me many years and has always given me good advice and no hard sell.
Sanlam, on the other hand, has seen fit to give out my contact details to various shady organisations and marketing companies over the years, and in each case I have told them not to do so. The latest offender is "Reality", some kind of points incentive scheme. I first heard about them by getting a marketing postcard in the mail. That was on Monday. I immediately sent an email to info@reality.co.za as well as to Sanlam, requsting my details be removed. Sanlam replied with a reference number 1-1BKJG9 and confirmed the same day that their marketing department had been informed. I wonder if they were "thinking ahead" when they gave out my details? I doubt it.
Obviously the Reality marketing machine was already in full gear and they couldn't process the "unsubscribe" requests fast enough, so today I got an email from them. I called their call centre and pointed out that I have already informed them not to send me any stuff, and the Call Centre team leader promised to get the marketing manager to call. I wonder whether this person will have the courage to face an angry customer or not.
When I emailed a copy of this blog to them, as well and my second "unsubscribe" request, I got a reference number from "Reality": Reference #4010 and #4802. Those unsubscribe requests must be pouring in.

HelloPeter complaint

DiscoveryCard gives out confidential information to AutoPage

Today I got a phone call from AutoPage, offering me a free contract phone. This is rather sad, because the number they called is the number I got from MTN after having a big fight with AutoPage about their 24 month contract that is actually a 25 month contract. But that's another story.
It turns out that the "promotion" they are doing is with Discovery Card. These are the same people who sent me statements in PDF format that they claim are encrypted and therefore totally private, but which contained my credit card numbers, not to mention the fact that the attachment name used to be "4901 3800 8391 4000.PDF", which looks remarkably like a credit card number.
As you can tell my confidence levels with either company are not exactly huge. What makes it worse is that I informed Discovery Card in June that I did not wish to receive any marketing calls or SMS messages from them. I know they got the message because someone from Discovery Card phoned me to find out if the ban extended to the SMS messages of my financial transactions.
It turns out that they decided to include my name and cell phone number in a database they provided to the AutoPage cell centre, thereby breaking the ECT Act. I have contacted them for an explanation, not that I expect to get a satisfactory one, but still.
Update 01-Dec-2006: A consultant from Discovery Card called to apologise. He explained that when they extracted the data to send to Autopage, they neglected to exclude the clients who didn't want to get marketing information or calls. Presumably they didn't care that this would violate the ECT Act. Of course it wasn't the marketing person responsible for this decision who called, but one of the call centre consultants. I guess he was too important to call himself, which is why I asked for a written apology.
Update (6 years later) 16 Aug 2012: I received the following email:

I am the Chief Operating Officer of Vitality and Discovery Card. The incident that happened below happened before my time but I did ask our team to try and ascertain what happened and what failed.
It was difficult to get to the bottom of this and we have been unable to reconstruct what the failure was and why it occurred.
I do like to think that the procedures and processes that we have in place today are rigorous and sound but there will be times when the human element fails. In these instances it’s important to recover well.
Our team takes customer service very seriously and it is paramount to our business. I know it is late but if it is any consolation, I am sorry for the below incident and I can assure you that were this to happen today, I would like to think that we would be able to resolve the issue and have retained you as a client.
Sincerely
Barry Sundelson.

Thanks, Barry. Much appreciated.

Champagne Castle Hotel Noise Pollution

This weekend I was in the Drakensberg, a stone's throw from the Champagne Castle Hotel, where Penny and I spent our honeymoon nearly 5 years ago. This time we were in a log cabin with a beautiful panoramic view and a persistent noise coming from a pump belonging to the hotel. It sounds like the damn thing just needs some oil, but it's probably a bearing that is on its way out.
Whatever the cause, the hotel management doesn't care. It can't be heard from the hotel itself, but their neighbours have been complaining about it for months. Can you imagine stepping outside your home every day to be confronted by a noise that you cannot ignore, almost as loud as a burglar alarm?
If that noise went off in a city suburb for longer than 5 minutes you could complain to the police and the municipality. But this happens in a World Heritage Site, so it's OK, I guess.
I walked up to the hotel reception and asked them what could be done, and they said they would mention it to the owner. But the noise carried on the entire weekend, and I could hear it all night with all the doors and windows closed. Thank you Champagne Castle Hotel for destroying the tranquility of my weekend.

See HelloPeter complaint | Hotel Web Site