Four Ways I Made Money By Complaining

My Mother, who is now 91 and getting, well more dotty than has been normal over the last almost century, says that you should never, ever complain. It just makes other people mad at you. Spoken like the true passive-agressive she is.

Any who, complaining in a nice polite and civil way has really been working for me lately.

First: I went to the cupboard for a can of tomato paste and found that the can had developed that scary bulge on both ends. This was an expensive brand, from an expensive store that had just opened. How old could it have been. So I took a couple of digital pictures and fired it off with a polite “gee, you might want to know about this problem with that batch” email.

Result: An email and letter of apology plus two very generous coupons for future purchases of said product.

Second: a late charge that I thought was unfair on a charge account. I called “simply to query” if indeed it was legit, and then asked if there was anything they could do just this once.

Result: They took the $25 late charge off the bill.

Third: a bank encouraged me to sign up for a different charge card. I made it clear that I would not pay any extra fees. But there came the bill and it had a $29 annual fee on it. I went to bank and complained and they gave me a number to call.

Result: the $29 fee was waived.

Finally: I had a really nifty bicycle tail light that worked better than any others I’ve seen anywhere, even online. Well, the part that kept it attached broke and it fell off and cracked the lens. So I looked it over, and since it really couldn’t be fixed, I did find the company name. So I went online and asked if they still made that particular light ( I’d done an online search but came up empty), and gushed about how superior it was to all other bike lights. These lights run about $30.

Result: They emailed back that they would send me a new one, gratis.

Now, you can sit there and just take it on the chin, like my Mom does and then run around behind everyones’ back and complain. Or you can take action and get some sort of positive resolution. I saved about $100 by making myself heard.

There’s almost always a choice, and times get tougher, it’s often worth taking that extra time to speak up.