HELP! Angry Customers Threating to Report to BBB, Attorney Gen, etc.

Nah

Any marketer who sells a decent volume of product will encounter this once in a while.

I once had someone contact the BBB saying I preyed on her because she was disabled. The BBB contacted me, even the guy on the phone was like "How would you know she was disabled?"

These groups get large volumes of complaints. They don't add up to much unless you are actually comitting fraud.

You would have a chance to respond to any complaints so
I wouldn't lose sleep over this. IRONICALLY it's the scam
artist who don't worry while honest marketers do.

-Ray Edwards

Nope, not a thing to worry about. Put your mind at ease. The only time you are going to need to worry is if you have an excessive amount of charge-backs. Then your merchant account is at risk. As long as you are not in the wrong (illegal activities, fraud, etc) you are going to have to learn to deal with these kind of customer complaints.

I do suggest you read up on the various groups that receive consumer complaints... the BBB, postal service (if you ship product), FTC, your state's consumer advocacy department, etc. If you know their policies, it will make dealing with this stuff easier...

Part of life in the online business world...has happened to me more than once.

Some of these people are just generally miserable for some reason or another and feel better taking it out on other people. Many of them are just total wimps and get off and wielding even the tiniest drop of power, even if it's a threatening voice mail.

Typically, I deal with these people by being sickeningly sweet and super friendly, 90% of the time it completely disarms them because they want a fight.

Make sure and save the crazy voicemail though...good evidence if anything escalates that this person isn't necessarily playing with a full deck.

Nobody goes broke overestimating the stupidity and ethical bankruptcy of the general public. Dispute resolution is often nasty business, dealing with the most vile, unwell, and undermedicated of miscreants.

Best course of action is to offer a refund immediately and maintain a complete record of all details related to the customer.

The important thing to remember when trying to defuse these kind of situations is that their ability to delude themselves is directly proportional to your proof of the contrary.

"You said ____"

No, we said "_____", and here is where we said it.

"I never received ____".

You received ____ on __/__/__ via ______. Here's the irrefutable evidence.

"I'm going to complain to ____ if you don't _____".

Here's our complete record of our dealings with you including all correspondence and transaction records.

Please be advised that we consider the filing of false or inaccurate complaints as a means of intimidation to be legally actionable.

Please govern yourself accordingly.

If you do that, and if they DO complain, your response basically amounts to, "they're nuts, here's the record of everything that's happened. We've already offered a full refund and can only reject this complaint as frivolous. Please contact us again if you require anything else from us to resolve the matter"

Then prepare to never hear about it again.

Good luck,

Brian

Do you really think she could figure out how to report you to these entities?

I agree, your always going to get people like that. It's amazing how upset people can get over something so simple. Guess to many people have been taken before.

I don't get many, but sometimes I wonder, what the heck?

I don't understand the people who have a problem, but instead of contacting you, they file a claim with PP, even though there are three forms of contact, saying they couldn't get any contact with you.

forget about it, you have adequate evidence, but yes probably best to just refund

Fire bad customers and return her money. The time you have spent on this has likely already made the transaction unprofitable.