The Power of Complaint

So many options to choose from!

Last month, as you might recall, Clorox tried to pull one over on me.  It had distributed toilet bowl cleaning gel with a defective cap last year, a problem that was supposedly fixed by the end of 2011.  But you can still find these "bad seed" bottles on store shelves, and in my case they were bundled in so-called "value packs" that contained one bottle with a good cap and one bottle with a leaky cap shrink-wrapped together and placed on price cut. 

When I posted about that sneaky maneuver here a couple weeks ago, Linda at Practical Parsimony suggested I contact Clorox.  I thought that was a good idea; earlier in the year I'd had a bad experience with a food item, contacted the manufacturer and received a very nice letter and coupon in response.  So I wrote to Clorox, and within a day or two received an e-mail response that was not particularly helpful.  Their lack of contrition didn't irritate me too much, as I'd already mapped out work-arounds for the bum caps, but it hardly endeared the brand to me.  I didn't bother replying. 

A few days later, a piece of snail mail arrived containing the coupon pictured above.  It's good for a free product from Clorox or one of their affiliated cleaning brands.  It was accompanied by a letter that was more specific to my complaint than the initial e-mail response I'd received.  I don't believe in complaining just to get coupons (a dishonest practice I've seen mentioned periodically on a very popular couponing blog), but I do believe in sharing your experiences, good and bad alike, with companies that serve you in any capacity, whether they manufacture your shampoo or install your cable.  It helps them to constantly refine their service, which benefits everyone, especially beleaguered consumers with runaway toilet bowl cleaner on their hands.