Consumer rage study overview:ย
- Who: Customer Care Measurement & Consulting and the Center for Services Leadership, a research center within the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, have unveiled the tenth National Customer Rage Survey.ย
- Why: The survey revealed that American consumers are experiencing more problems with products and services than ever before.
- Where: Nationwide.
The recently released National Customer Rage Survey has revealed that American consumers are experiencing a record amount of problems with products and services โ and are angry with companies efforts to resolve them.ย
Consumers have also become โsteadily more belligerentโ when complaining about problems, according to the survey, which, in its tenth year, estimated businesses are putting $887 billion in future profits at risk with their โmediocre complaint handling.โย
The independent survey, which is conducted online and involves 1,000 Americans, found that 74% of American consumers reported either experiencing a product or service problem during the past year.ย
A total of 56% of consumers, meanwhile, answered that the problem with the product or service wasted their time, while 43% said it cost them money and 31% responded that it caused them emotional distress.
The level of customer rage โ defined by the surveyors as the consumer experience of complaining about a product or service problem โ held steady, meanwhile, with 63% of respondents saying they felt rage about the experience.ย
The survey found that consumers are becoming more aggressive in general with their efforts to resolve their issues with businesses, with 43% answering that they raised their voice to show their displeasure when it came to their most significant problems.ย
Consumers increasingly taking their complaints online, says survey
Consumers are also increasingly taking their complaints digital, with 50% of respondents using e-mail, chat, and social media as their primary complaint channel, up from only 5% in the year 2013.ย
A total of 32% of complainants responded that they posted about their most significant problem on a social media site, an amount that is more than double those that answered the same in the 2020 survey.
The National Customer Rage Survey was first unveiled in 2003, while this latest version is the first since 2020.ย
The online survey is conducted in collaboration from Customer Care Measurement & Consulting (CCMC) and the Center for Services Leadership, a research center within the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.ย
In other news regarding consumer complaints, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau revealed last November that there has been an increase in consumer complaints revolving around cryptocurrency fraud and scams.ย
Have you experienced a problem with a product or service within the past year? Let us know in the comments!ย
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23 thoughts onNew consumer rage study finds Americans experiencing record product, service problems
PURINA FRISKIES CAN CAT FOOD. We are REALLY sick and tired of the outrageous number of dented damaged cat food cans weโve gotten from Purina, (usually online through Chewy or Walmart online, but also Petsmart, tractor supply and Target) We have stacks of cans that we are unable to return, because when we open a case of 32 or 40 ct cans, and half are dented, we have to use what we have. We feed 28+ rescue/foster cats, so we need to have at least 10 cans of the same flavor every morning, several have health issues and they get other food. (yes, like children they will fight over food if one has something different in their dish).
BUT when you order 3 cases of 40 cans online and over half are dented (the same machine made thumbprint dent in the side), damaged (crushed on the tops or bottoms), or popped open and leaking all over, and some are so bad, packed in boxes looking like factory seconds, leaving maybe only 30 mis-matched different flavors out of 120 cans, and which can not be returned as a whole case, because we are forced to use the remaining undamaged cans, and we can not afford to run to the store and spend another $30 โ $60- $90 for more cat food.
So we have, (no exageration) over THEE HUNDRED CANS (300 cans) of Purina Friskies cat food stacked up โ (not counting the cans we had to throw away) with no idea what to do with them. Hate to throw that much money in the trash can, we are afraid to feed to our cats, and even a local lady who cares for a colony of feral cats didnโt want to take the chance feeding it to her ferals.
We have contacted Purina on occasion, and they sent a couple coupons (which doesnโt even come close to cover our losses). We even sent them a package with a few of the dented cans and photos of the stacks of dented cans we have, to show them just how bad it is. Occasionally, we have been able to return cases to walmart and chewy (although to return items to chewy it takes some hoop jumping), which is a hassle having to find a box, pack it up, use a mile of packing tape, haul the heavy box off to the post office, then wait for the replacement (or refund), and in the mean time, we have to buy more can cat food to hold us over until the replacement(s) arrives.
They (Purina) has been aware of this quality control problem, (for at least the past 3 years). I am getting sick and tired of taking photos of the damaged cans, writing down the upc and code numbers, with the receipt for each shipment, just so I can either return to sender or send to purina for a couple measly coupons to at least make up for some of our losses.
i agree, companies donโt seem to care about customer satisfaction. I have had cox as my tv/internet/phone provider and every time i try to lower my bill by dropping the phone (which i rarely use) they tell me my bill will go up. makes absolutely no sense to me. how can my bill go up if i drop a service? plus when i do decide to just keep it, they canโt lower my bill. plus when they have outages they donโt give credits for the time that i canโt watch my very expensive cable tv or the very expensive internet. I really need to just shop around for a new company that isnโt satellite. thatโs just 1 company, i could go on and on as iโm sure quite a few people could too.
Add me
Streaming cable service or whatever itโs called, sucks. They raise their monthly price every year for BS excuses. The channel list most of them offer is garbage. If they lose a contract with a company like Disney and lose certain channels, some companies donโt drop the price. The customer service is atrocious. Yes Iโm talking about you Sling TV and YouTube TV, but mostly Sling. When YTTV goes through contract disputes and drops channels, theyโll drop prices. Thatโs the only thing I respect about them concerning prices.
Yes!! DirecTV has the absolute worst customer service and their reps repeatedly give out wrong information so I can never rely on what they promise. Norton is a close second with untrained reps taking weeks to resolve technical issues with their software and wasting unacceptable amounts of my time. Yesterday, I had a major issue with my Amazon Music Unlimited subscription and had to spend over an hour with a rep who was off the charts demeaning, rude, and confrontational. It resulted in me canceling my service entirely. In my experience, itโs usually companies that monopolize an industry who tend to have the worst service because they know you donโt have other options.
The ads on Facebook for bras, socks and underwear that show a person with layers of fat losing weight wearing the items states that they will refund the purchase price if you donโt like the item but even though they are mailed from somewhere in the United States they have to be returned to China which is very expensive. False advertising!
Well, they say misery loves company but I donโt feel comforted reading this. But is anyone surprised this is happening? Almost everything is a problem these days when it comes to customer service. The problem is multifaceted. Itโs mainly middle management not wanting to report to upper management that there are problems. And members of the board of large companies are basically left in an ignorant is bliss State of Mind thinking that everything is going well because their last quarter earnings were great โ meanwhile, the majority of your customers are enraged, disappointed, or emotionally distressed โ and at the very least, they had their time and or money wasted. Another problem is outsourcing. There are cultural, language, and communication barriers combined with low pay and employees not really putting that much effort into helping the customer because they have so much pressure on them from their supervisors to answer so many emails and calls per hour.. it seems like absolutely everything needs reform when it comes to products, services and customer service within America Companies ( and the Outsourcing agencies who deal with America). Sigh.. hopefully things will get better and we can come back to this comment section saying Thank God. One last thing I will end with is that itโs such a shame that the only way to get things resolve these days is to file a an official complaint. It seems like thatโs the natural progression of getting anything resolved. Do these companies really want multiple complaints on their records? Anyhow I digressโฆ
I purchased a propane gas dryer over 9 years ago. It never worked correctly. I contacted Lowes in Murray, Kentucky several times with no success. Then I contacted Whirlpool as the dryer would not dry a load of clothes properly. It took 2-3 cycles of 90 minutes each at high heat to dry a load of clothes. After several calls, they still wouldnโt send out a repair man to fix it. We ended up having to purchase another new dryer a few years ago.
People also get more belligerent because of the inability to actually talk with a person. (and often that person is someone whose english is poor & sometimes close to impossible to understand). No matter how good a company thinks its AI is, 99% of the time it is NOT. I have yet to find an AI โ either online or on the phone โ that has actually been able to help. Itโs most definitely not a lack of instances with which to try either! The almost complete outsourcing of customer service to either computers or other countries is definitely a major contributor to peopleโs more common frustration. IF you can even get a person, you have usually told the story several times already.
There is also the fact that things are (in my opinion mostly intentionally) made to lower standards than in the past. My mother who bought her first washer in the 70s can still use the same one today, but the one I bought 5 years ago is already behaving badly. Same concept with almost every other manufactured item nowโฆ
Thatโs my 2 cents :)
It seems like everywhere is like this poor service and FedEx is really off their game the last 5 packages that they have delivered I have to have someone go pick it up from someone elseโs home or they have taken to my home I have just been lucky enough that the people contact me which brings me to a whole new complaint our private information such as phone numbers should be private and that isnโt the case the only thing that should be on a shipping label is to whom itโs going to and address an the delays are just a chain reaction. My last package that was delivered had over $300 in business equipment and I was very upset when I got the call from the nice lady on the other side of town and when I called FedEx I was on the robot call for almost 20 minutes until it said your package was delivered at such time and hung up on me after 2 timeโs of this I finally got a hold of someone from the local office that called me directly you should never have to deal or explain to a company that they delivered to the wrong house and after several of timeโs explain this they tell you they will send someone to try getting your package back is nonsense