About

Hi,

My name is Alistair Munro. I’m a 35 year old computer bod living in Weston Super Mare UK.

I created www.artofcomplaint.com in response to getting sick of poor customer service from many companies, and completely ripped off by others. What made it most frustrating was that there was often no right of reply or redress. Even if you could find an address to complain to, being just one lone customer gave you no voice.

It really started in June 2007. I had quite a severe illness, which needed quite strong Medication. Quite quickly, I put on nearly 2 stone. This obviously made me self consious, and in need of new clothes.

I visited a Branch of Next Clearence Near where I work in Bristol. They had some sale ranges in which I quite liked. However, the trouser sizes between 30 and 38inch were very well catered for. But in the nice sale ranges, not a single garment was available. There were one or two things in the expensive frumpy end.

I was at quite a vulnerable place as it was going into that shop. Coming out, I was really genuinely hurt. Aparently I was now oficially too fat to wear nice clothes, according to Next.

And this set me off thinking, If I complain to the store, they’ll just ignore me. If I complain to Next, they’ll just ignore me. How is it that If I’m not the only next customer with a >40″ waist, that Next just ignore those people?

It’s simple, because there’s nowhere to voice and publicly congrgate around that complaint. So the individuals are too easy to dismiss. It sounded to me like something the internet could solve. And thus “The Art of Complaint” is born.

I’m hoping over time to get other Authors of complaints on board, to start to gather momentum behind the idea. Ideally, I’d like to start a new way of complaining, one that’s public and vocal. Let’s see if we can’t improve the way companies handle complaints a bit?

That’s the future, let’s see how we get on with Next.

Thanks for reading,

Alistair (sometimes known as B1ackcr0w)