Gone to the dogs
By Maria Nguyen
December 6 2002
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Not Good Enough

The Internet is a powerful medium, so why not take advantage of it when you have a gripe with corporate Australia? Funnily enough, when complaints are made public - and the Web is a pretty public place to air your grievances - companies seem to take much more notice and act faster to remedy any ill will.

Not Good Enough is the brainchild of Fiona Stewart, who was disappointed with the service she received once from Qantas and subsequently started Not Good Enough as a way to give consumers a place to share advice and consumer experiences. Corporations even subscribe to Not Good Enough so they can access customer feedback and complaints. So don't be shy, log on, have your say or chat to other consumers in the Gripe HQ about everything from banks and fast-food outlets, to funeral services, insurance companies and weight-loss programs.

Must try harder
Amanda Morgan
Sydney Morning Herald
26 October 2002
Page 12

When you've had a bad service experience, don't get mad, post it on Fiona Stewart's website www.notgoodenough.org, writes Amanda Morgan.

Bad service. Many of us accept it as a fact of life and feel there is little we can do to improve it. Some of us don't have the time to complain, some of us are put off by the spiel the customer service manager gives us over the phone. M ost of us just don't want to be seen as whingers.

But Dr Fiona Stewart wants change. She's dedicated a website to empowering customers who have been burnt. At Not Good Enough visitors can share their poor service experience with a global audience and, she hopes, shock a few organisations into cleaning up their act.

The incident which spurred Stewart - who says she was never a "perennial complainer" - into action was the collapse of Ansett in September last year. She was stranded at Brisbane Airport, and was unhappy with the way Qantas handled the crisis. She was aware of gripe sites in the United States, but "knew they only collected complaints and didn't do anything with them". She saw an opening for the comments to be treated as qualitative data, analysed and fed back to companies.

"I got thinking on the flight from Brisbane to Melbourne ... that Qantas needed a site like this to hold them accountable. "But then I thought, 'It's not just about Qantas, its about everything in life'. Hence NotGoodEnough was conceptualised," Stewart says.

Launched in February, the site quickly gained a loyal following and after six months has had 135,000 people visit it. Stewart's target was 100,000. The consumer hub now has 10,000 registered users who regularly contribute their bad service experiences by email. Of the thousands she receives each week, Stewart selects 10 for the Top 10 Gripes.

"It's increasingly hard to decide what goes in," Stewart says. "We try to look at gripes where many people can learn a lot, so they have broad applicability, sometimes we choose them because they are absolutely ludicrous and they say something about a customer service process that needs fixing.

"Sometimes we list them because they're quirky, and we list some because they are downright serious," Stewart says. The selected complaints are passed on to the companies concerned - with the permission of the customer who posted the gripe - and they are given five days to respond so the site can post the complaint, and the response, simultaneously.

The gripes are changed each Monday. "We're finding the majority of companies are getting back to us by the deadline, which is Friday afternoon, and if they don't get back to us by then, they're sure getting back to us by Monday morning," Stewart says.

The most complained about industries, according to Stewart, are insurance, fast food, education, airlines, builders and tradesmen, welfare, furniture removalists and furniture manufacturers.

"It never ceases to amaze me how badly some companies can act," Stewart says. But "we don't condemn companies for stuffing up. If they use the method and actually fix the complaint, that is what is going to keep the customer for you."

Because www.notgoodenough.org acts as an "online watchdog and whistleblower" its own process has to be completely transparent. Stewart acknowledges, "We are very cautious that the only thing going for us is our independence." For that reason the site accepts no advertising or sponsorship, and preliminary talks with corporate investors are tricky because of the potential conflict of interest that could emerge.

The "gold" of the site, according to Stewart, is in intelligence reports produced quarterly for paying companies to dig up the dirt on themselves, or more likely, their competitors. She has recently employed a sales team to get the scheme up and running as soon as possible.

The hub's current flagship product is an automated email service, paid for annually, where companies can pick a series of key words and any time that word - for example, a competitor's name - is submitted in an email, the complaint is delivered to the company. It also means that if the company is mentioned, it could potentially get in contact with the customer, resolve the complaint and post the conclusion on the site. There is also a search function for trawling the current and archive databases, which users pay to use.

"We can't see any other way of making this commercially viable - this is the way of not selling out to anyone," Stewart says. Initially, Stewart was working 16-hour days manning the site. It was a hoax email slipping through the net that convinced her she needed more moderators.

"You can tell if something's bullshit pretty quickly, if you are looking for certain things to decode," Stewart, who as an academic, co-wrote a book on online research, says.

"You see so many remarkable stories ... and so many of them are fair dinkum. This one ... I was looking after the site on my own then, I was holding it together, but only just."

Since the hoax, Stewart has employed four email moderators and has tightened the site's verification processes. She has a total of nine staff, but it is still a seven-days-a-week job.

She says the main reason the site has been so successful is the "pseudo anonymity" of the internet. Ripped off or annoyed customers can complain under the guise of a user name, which, according to Stewart, makes them just that bit braver.

"What I've found since starting the site is there is so many disempowered people who don't like to be seen to be complaining. "But I think it is the right technology at the right time. I don't think we have a massive consumer rights movement in Australia. The internet is there 24/7 and people can get their complaint off their chest when they feel most passionately about it and what I found, after writing the book, is that the net is a very disclosive [sic] environment. People are going to tell it straight."

Stewart says she has been overwhelmed by the response to the site and the online community it has spawned.

"It has exceeded our expectations a million times over. I might have had the initial idea, but its not about me. It is owned by the people who use it."

And another thing...
Michelle Griffin
The Sunday Age
Page 6 Agenda

Want to complain about your employer, the service at your local restaurant or your phone bill? Dedicated sites where the public can vent their spleen are springing up all over the Internet. Michelle Griffin reports.

Employees used to bitch about their jobs down the pub. Now they're venting online at sites devoted to workplace aggravation. These complaint sites are fun. They're even addictive. But they can be risky.

In May this year, an editorial assistant submitted a memo about her "stupid bosses" to MediaBistro, a media employee website that runs a semi-regular column called Bitch Box - "your rottenest stories and finest whines".

This is her anonymous rant. "Hey editors, get off your f ----- high horses and come down and smell your trash. We are your editorial assistants - not your maids, your mothers or your personal assistants. You've been around long enough to know plants need water and if they don't get it, they die. The refrigerator doesn't keep things forever. I'm tired of my one little yoghurt being surrounded by your seven containers of three remaining bites of a $50 lunch that has been in there so long, it smells like sweaty socks. I'm half your age, make a third of your salary, and after baby-sitting you for over a year, could do your job and still have time for a manicure. The copier is push-button, occasionally the printer does need paper, and the production department is just down the hall. Chimps could do half this stuff. I do not have ESP. If you've told me to do something, it's done, if you didn't, it wasn't. I can't read your mind ? and if it's after 5.30, too late. Your forgetfulness and lack of organisation is not my emergency." She signed it "the assistant" but foolishly identified the culprit, Hearst magazines, US publisher of titles such as Cosmopolitan, Marie-Claire and O, the Oprah magazine.

These mastheads may sell a cheeky girl-power message to the customers but the company does not have a reputation for tolerating insubordination from the staff. Hearst uses software to track mentions of its name on the web. And they are able to trace all e-mails and web links used by employees from its office. They quickly identified the surly assistant, and sacked her.

Although the sacking seriously spooked the editors, writers, assistants and interns that frequent MediaBistro's message boards, many of them sent in their own stories of editorial assistant hell. (Although the one poster from Hearst remembered to say how rewarding and wonderful HER job was.)

"Her words were what we've probably all said at one point or another over a beer with a co-worker after work," protested fellow poster Nikki. "I'm disheartened that it was taken as more than this and that someone saw it as viable grounds for firing."

Employers are becoming more vigilant about policing employees' use of e-mail and Internet on company time and company computers. Software packages like eBlaster and Web Spy (first developed by an Australian company for the WA Government) allow bosses to track every e-mail, every web link, every computer key stroke, to make sure nobody is goofing off, downloading porn or spreading company secrets. Or bitching on company time.

More than one in four American companies have dismissed employees for misuse of the Internet or e-mail, according to a report last year from the American Management Association.

It's increasingly common in Australia, too. In April last year, Telstra suspended 27 workers in its Global Operations Centre in Clayton for downloading pornography and placed another 65 under investigation for "inappropriate usage of the Internet". Workers at Toyota, Holden and Centrelink have been sacked for similar offences. But then there's the case of the two council workers from Narrabri Shire Council who called their managers Huey, Dewey and Louie in an e-mail. They were also discovered and sacked. A Federal Court did find that Ansett had illegally sacked an employee who e-mailed union information to other staff members, but there is still very little protection under privacy laws for grousing by e-mail. The Federal Privacy Commission has issued guidelines recommending that companies spell out their surveillance policies to employees and make it clear what exactly is and isn't acceptable use. But it is not yet compulsory for all corporations to do this.

Despite these risks, employees are still drawn to the web to vent about their bosses, conditions and their customers. As well as media bistro, the sulky sorts in the media business also swap tales at The Vault, a careers and job placement site that allows extremely personal kvetching about companies such as Conde Nast and TimeWarner. Fashion industry gossip site Chic Happens, run by expat Australians Ben Widdicombe and Horacio Silva, relies on the disenchanted underlings of Vogue and Vanity Fair for many of their scoops, such as Vogue editor Anna Wintour's affair with a property tycoon.

In the US, waiters and chefs have let off steam on sites like OnTheRails, ChefChat and the now defunct BitterWaitress, which used to name celebrities who didn't tip or hounded the staff. (Rudy Giuliani and Sharon Stone were notoriously rude to the men and women in white and black.) Those who work the aisles of America's department stores send their worst stories to customerssuck - motto, the customer is never right. "If you are offended by the harsh reality that employees in your local store are not always happy serving you, then find someone who cares," says the notice on the website's opening page. "We're off the clock!" Then there's the self-explanatory IHateMyJob message board. The random complaints generator kvetch.com, which did the most to protect its posters' anonymity by making its archive unsearchable, closed down in July this year. The site's host, Derek Powazek, said that after five years, he was simply overwhelmed with submissions and he was starting to kvetch about his job.

In Australia, employees have begun to colonise www.notgoodenough.org, the complaints site established by sociologist Dr Fiona Stewart. www.Notgoodenough.org is principally a customers' site where people can complain about lousy service. The top 10 gripes are verified with phone calls to the complainant and the business concerned, and then listed on the site every week. Last week, McDonald's copped the number one complaint, and it was a customer complaining about the treatment dished out to the teens behind the counter by the trainee manager.

"When (The manager) found the cups were in the wrong holders, she stated loud enough for all to here (sic) 'Who's the retard?' - who put the cups in the wrong holder. The young lady serving me owned up to it. Not good enough McDonald's!! As I am an active parent in the school community locally, regionally and statewide, I receive sponsorship from their store, but if this is how they really treat and train our children for the workforce at the low wages they earn, then they can count on me to share this news around."

"We've got to be very careful in the employment forum," says Stewart, who says her biggest start-up costs have been legal fees. "That's the area where customer service reps, those who work for banks, those in call centres get to vent their spleen." Sometimes, Stewart can't run complaints about bosses and managers that are sent to her. "They're too complex." She has tried approaching Trades Hall to set up some kind of complaints site. "We do get horror stories. People out there are fairly disempowered."

Most of the employee complaints on www.notgoodenough.org are about customers, who are less likely to track down the poster and get them sacked, or to sue. "I treat customers the way they treat me," says "Kate" of Coles. "If you piss me off, I'll get my own back. I'll crush your tomatoes or squash your bread as I put it into your bag, very discreetly of course so that you don't notice until you get home."

www.Notgoodenough.org only went live in February and already has 10,000 active members griping on its message boards about everything from Telstra maintenance to overcharging on their gas bill and the awful pizza they had last Saturday. Stewart says the site had only just gone live when a private health fund approached her to find out "how much it would cost to buy us off. But the only thing we have to go by is our independence". Stewart plans to make money from the site by selling the information back to the companies concerned. She argues that instead of relying on focus groups and market research, companies will pay to find out what the market really thinks of them. The site has also started posting unsolicited praise from happy customers as well, and the site is full of loving notices from happy customers of Bunnings. "That kind of recommendation, unprompted, is worth its weight in gold to a company," says Stewart.

"The thing about the Internet is that it is a peer to peer environment. The unhappy customer has a new-found power, and it's going to be huge."

And the unhappy employee? Well, they should probably keep their thoughts to themselves while at the corporate coalface. They should wait until they get home and log into their anonymous webmail account before they sound off about the boss via e-mail. Then again, remember the editorial assistant who was sacked from Hearst? Magazine editors who read her spray in the Bitch Box contacted MediaBistro wanting to give her a job - as a writer.

WA's in grip of the Gripe
by Fiona Adolph
Sunday Times
Page 26

West Australians don't like to be seen as whingers - that time honoured title is handballed to our English cousins.

But it seems it’s a different story under the cover of anonymity.

A new website for whingers shows that Sandgropers outgripe all other states, complaining about everything from poor service at the corner noodle bar to inadequate training for youngsters at fast food outlets.

And we save our grandest gripes for shonky builders and greedy banks, according to the websites’s founder Dr Fiona Stewart.

Qantas too regularly comes in for an ear bashing from West Australians with website visitors commonly complaining that domestic travel is cheaper for east coasters.

Since the consumer website www.NotGoodEnough.org was launched in February it has attracted more than 150 000 visits.

“We are getting about 1000 people aged 12 –92 logging in each day” Dr Stewart said.

Conspicuous among the visitors is a band of company public relations spies keen to find out what consumers are saying about them and their competitors.

The list they don’t want to end up on is a companies behaving badly Top 10 – this week’s most complained about companies.

Dr Stewart, a communications sociologist who is also the coauthor of a book on internet research said the site gave voice to those too meek to speak out about consumer issues. It has also made companies more accountable.

In the past they many have buried unhappy Jans” she said. The site can be good news for consumers too.

One visitor writes that he was inundated with free products from a company after she complained there was not enough bread mix in the bottom of a bag to make a final loaf.

But not all views get an airing on the site. Messages deemed abusive, sexist, racist homophonic or otherwise obnoxious have postings removed.

1. Westpac*
2. Fernwood*
3. Bride to Be Mag*
4. Australia Post*
5. Mary Delahunty MP
6. Video Ezy
7. Communications R Us*
8. Direct Dial Cars/Drive.com.au*
9. Ikea
10. Camperworld*

* Denotes response

Who's Getting What Results

ANZ
Chubb Home Security
Lenards Chicken
Kodak
Harvey Norman
VIP Home Services
Coles
Blockbusters
AAA Fencing
St George

This list is a small selection of the results achieved by NGE

Where Companies have their say