Not worth keeping mum

I believe that if you`re going to complain about a service, product, shop or an experience, you do it to the people that messed it up for you.

Trite little signs in shops and restaurants sometimes proclaim: "If you like our service, tell everyone. If you don`t, tell us." While this might be a good marketing practice on the part of the restaurant, it isn`t really appropriate to seek collusion from your patrons in covering up shoddy performance.

However, while it seems unreasonable for these establishments to ask their customers to keep mum, it is fair enough to expect to be told of their displeasure. And it is around this that I have constructed my ethos of complaining politely but immediately when I encounter a problem.

Two incidents recently coloured my customer experience. The first was due to the Young Designers Emporium`s stitching policies, which have seen clothes escaping my body in the most inconvenient of circumstances.

After one particular incident when I found myself with bra exposed after a strap tore free at a nightclub, I took it upon myself to write to YDE management.

YDE`s Web site, as do most these days, has a feedback section, and I sent my complaint through this channel.

The turnaround time was absolutely brilliant, and within 24 hours I had received an apology, a promise to fix all my broken clothes, and the offer of a voucher to compensate me for my troubles. While this excellent customer service didn`t undo the damage, it certainly put me in a better frame of mind about shopping at YDE in future.

But when you`re looking for a certain peelability in your fruit, you`ll automatically go for those with a name that has been engineered to suggest this quality.

Georgina Guedes, editor, Brainstorm

The second incident has had my friends rolling on the floor with laughter at my pedantry. While it really isn`t a problem that could be categorised as either embarrassing or terribly inconvenient, it irked me nonetheless and I felt duty-bound to pursue it.

Woolworths has a type of naartjie on sale called Easy Peelers. In early summer, these naartjies were aptly named, with the skin practically falling from the fruit at the merest impression of my thumb.

No longer. Easy Peelers, from the middle of summer until now, have such a hard peel that I cannot force my thumb through it no matter how hard I try. I have bent back fingernails in the process, and always end up covered in sour, waxy naartjie-skin juice.

My solution is now to use a knife or the handle of a spoon or fork to penetrate this shell, and then to claw away tiny fragments of peel with my fingernails.

All of this wouldn`t bother me so much if they weren`t called Easy Peelers. If they were Golden Orbs or something, I`d get over it or switch brands.

But when you`re looking for a certain peelability in your fruit, you`ll automatically go for those with a name that has been engineered to suggest this quality.

So, again using the company`s Web site, I sent a message to the Woolworths complaints department. The site`s turnaround time isn`t as good as that of YDE, but I guess it is busier. However, the company doesn`t adhere to the deadlines it set out for response, which isn`t advisable in a system like this.

I got the same apology, a promise to take it up with the company`s suppliers and a voucher for my troubles.

Again, I appreciate the sentiment, but the Easy Peelers are still impenetrable. I guess I can`t really complain about the lack of resolution since I have benefited from my feedback. If I were to complain each time I bought a packet of clam-like Easy Peelers, would I be rewarded with a voucher for my broken thumbnails?

I guess it`s all about companies balancing the costs of compensating upset customers and actually redoing their business model to accommodate the solution to their complaints.