I’m a great believer in complaining. If something’s not good enough, I’ll generally find a way to make a complaint and try to get it fixed. Working in journalism, I’m well aware that I’m not the only one: if there’s something in the magazine or on the website that people don’t like, I’ll hear about it via the forums, comments field, editorial e-mail address, or whathaveyou.

Somewhere along the line, though, I’d come to believe that making complaints online isn’t very effective; half-memories of e-mailing people about problems only to never, ever hear back until I got on the phone or sent in a physical letter bubbled away in the back of my mind, convincing me that there was no point in complaining electronically.

Until recently.

Obviously, the only time I had an opportunity to complain was when something was actually wrong, but since I’m plagued with preternaturally bad luck, that didn’t really hold me back.

My first e-mail complaint came about after I bought a food item from Sainsbury’s that, despite having been refridgerated carefully and being well within its use-by date, had gone off. Emphatically, stinkily off. Diligently noting down the tracking codes, purchase date, sell-by date, and everything else I thought might be relevant, I used the complaint form on Sainsbury’s website to fire off an account of my displeasure. I got an automated message back, and then, the very next morning, an e-mail from a human being apologising and asking for more details. Since I’d thrown out the offending item (well, would you fancy having rancid meat hanging around your kitchen?) I couldn’t give her the barcode number (… there’s a tip, there, for anyone else who might have cause to similarly complain) and so the incident couldn’t be investigated any further, but I was offered a Sainsbury’s voucher in compensation. It arrived in the post 2 days later. Bravo, Sainsbury’s!

My next complaint was slightly more trivial. I’d ordered some DVDs from Amazon, and when one of them arrived it was packaged, not in Amazon’s usual ultra-thick cardboard packing, but in a thin card envelope, bereft of any bubble-wrap. I actually, stupidly, thought it looked a lot tidier, and would be easier to recycle (plus the Amazon logo was far less apparent, making the package less obviously attractive to thieves), but once I opened it, quickly changed my mind, since the DVD box inside was broken. One end had completely shattered.

Buoyed by my success with Sainsbury’s, I headed to the Amazon website to have a moan, but discovered that Amazon’s complaints process was rather more streamlined than any others I’d come across - perhaps too streamlined, since all the complaint headers were pre-defined and there weren’t any that exactly fitted my problem. I’d received the item, it hadn’t gone missing, it wasn’t the wrong item, it wasn’t irredeemably broken (the DVD itself was fine) but I wanted to moan about the rubbish packaging and the broken box. I ended up using the wrong header, explaining thoroughly in the text of my complaint, and sending it anyway. Again, I got an automated acknowledgement of my e-mail, and then a real person the next day. I declined their offer of a replacement, mostly due to laziness and not wanting to send back the DVD that did, after all, work, so they refunded my postage costs instead. Hurrah!

Less recently, I had to complain to Play.com when they sent me the wrong item. That involved getting a complaint reference, sending back the wrong thing by recorded delivery, and then receiving a refund to my credit card and the correct item in the post the week after. In all three cases, I’ve found that response is quick - instantaneous, actually, since the auto-response is triggered first - and efficient, with customer service types happy to help. It’s actually nicer than having to return things to most bricks-and-mortar shops!

To balance out the relentless tide of negativity, I’ve been making an effort to also contact companies if they’ve done something especially worthy of praise - or, y’know, if I just really liked something they sell. This has been less successful, which is either weird or to be expected; after all, I’m not actually asking anyone to do anything, just e-mailing to say “hi, you’re ace, please keep doing what you do!” Of three e-mails, I received no response whatsoever to the first one (and that’s after I found the correct e-mail address, since the one on the product bounced back!); got a confused and confusing response to another, advising me to ask their in-store staff for help (um…); and got a lovely e-mail from the last, even if I did get the vague feeling they thought I was a bit mad for e-mailing them just to say I was especially happy with one of their products.

In summary, then - complaints via e-mail seem to work wonders, but if you’ve got compliments, might be best to deliver them in person.

According to a survey, 90% of people who shop online have had a bad experience somewhere along the way - either because goods weren’t as described, or because they never showed up, or because their credit card number got ripped off along the way. Nine out of every ten people who shop online.

That seems like a lot. And if, as the survey suggests, 40% of people who have a bad experience with a particular retailer online stop buying from that retailer, it seems like an awful lot of businesses should be folding pretty soon. (It’s possible that people say they’re going to boycott a company when asked, and mean it, too… until they need to buy something and that retailer is the only, or even just the cheapest, place to buy it from.) That sounds like a pretty serious problem to me.

Thinking about it, I’m trying to figure out when/if I’ve ever had a bad experience shopping online. Touch wood, I’ve been okay so far. I bought something from an eBay merchant once that took weeks and weeks to show up, but eventually did turn up; I’ve had items lost or stolen in transit, but the etailer readily replaced them. Nothing has happened that would make me actively boycott a company. (Besides maybe Royal Mail.)

So, in a move that reeks of desperately fishing for comments, has anyone reading this had a particularly bad experience with online shopping? What happened? Did it get resolved? And if not, are you still boycotting the company in question? Enquiring minds want to know.

I spotted an advert on the Tube this morning for PayPal. It was actually really clever - something about “are you sharing too much when you shop online?” with a mocked-up payment form asking for an e-mail address, credit card number, number of lovers, and ‘last time I cried.’ Supposedly, using PayPal is infinitely easier and safer than using a credit card online.

While the safer part of that claim may well be true, it can’t just be me that finds using PayPal a right pain in the arse, can it?

When I set up my PayPal account, I wanted to link it to my bank. In order to do so, I had to give PayPal my details and then wait for two small deposits to be made into my account. Once the deposits had cleared, I had to log back in and tell PayPal how much they were for - quite an interesting method of checking you are who you say you are (or at least that you have access to the bank account you claim to own) plus it meant I was up about 30p, but it took a hell of a long time. Then there was some hassle with making sure that I really lived where I said I did, involving automated phone calls to a landline and then entering a pin code. But after a couple of weeks and a lot of faff, I figured I’d never have to worry about it again: I could use PayPal to shop online and the money would come out of my bank and everything would be hunkydory.

Except now apparently my bank has started declining PayPal payments. I got an e-mail today that read as follows:

Dear Sarah Dobbs,

The mandate from your bank account was returned by your bank on 30 Oct. 2007 for the reason below:

The bank is disputing the Direct Debit Instruction (DDI).

Yours sincerely,
PayPal

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

Ummmm. Okay. I logged in and found that apparently PayPal has used my credit card number to access my money and the transaction appears to have been carried out anyway … except now I’m kind of not sure … and I’m dreading having to play the phone tag game again.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this is the last I’ll hear of this and that it’ll all work out after all. But I doubt it, somehow.