photo credit: Swathi_Sridharan
Hi there, and welcome to Zimbabwe’s very first consumer complaints blog. I say very first as I’ve seen no evidence of anything close, and I have looked.
Boy, have I looked. Often I have found myself with a problem, frustrated by a lack of response from the powers that be. I actually planned this blog three years ago, but a combination of factors conspired to make it a pipe dream until now.
I wanted to create a space in the ilk of The Consumerist, a place where the voice of the customer is heard, not just in some Call Center echo chamber but out here, out loud, where everyone can judge a company’s services not just on their advertising, but on results.
This space isn’t just for us to moan about bad service, but also to glorify those businesses that don’t do only what they’re MEANT to do, but more. Those lowly minions in otherwise ordinary companies who go out of their way to help us, the people who really pay their salaries.
The goal is not to vilify, but to enable those companies with either service or perception problems to try and bring themselves to account, to demonstrate to the paying public that it’s not just about the bottom line, it’s about the front line. It’s how WE are treated, from the reception desk or automated switchboard, all the way through to the upper echelons of corporate management.
We have long wanted a voice, and although the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe has been available (although largely silent in the past few years), it needs a grassroots movement of disaffected consumers to create a shift in the culture of Zimbabwe.
Tell us your stories, and we’ll see if together we can’t make a difference.
Because nobody seems to have been listening so far, at least not to me.