Harnessing the Power of Social Media to Win Your Complaint

You may not win every case, but you can win most

Decades ago, I lived in San Diego, California. It was so long ago that the internet had not been invented. It was there that I learned my first lesson about how to successfully complain to a company about a bad product. Along my daily drive to work was a car dealership. One day I saw a man with one of their cars that was draped in an old sheet. On it he had painted, “Ask me about my lemon I bought here.” That simple phrase was followed by an arrow pointed at the sales office. The man wore a large round yellow costume with his limbs protruding out of four holes that looked like an enormous lemon. I stopped to chat. Apparently, his new car was rife with defects and in three months he had been back to the service department eight times. There were no lemon laws then and despite pleading with the sales department, they would not exchange his auto for a new one or return his money. Hence the demonstration. He made certain to park the car exactly one foot beyond the property line for obvious legal reasons. A few weeks later in the local paper, there he was with his story and photo. A follow-up article described how the dealership had eventually caved into his demands and granted him a new vehicle.

I am not saying this tactic wouldn’t work today, but why bother doing this when…