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August 27, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Online complaints – Don’t be an accidental troll

The power of online reviews & complaints:

Online Reviews help businesses to share wins and to build trust and provide social proof of the value of goods or services. They can also provide a space for disgruntled customers to make a very public complaints. Unfortunately at times consumers act in an emotional state and do not fully consider the consequences of their actions.

It is heartwarming for a business owner to receive positive reviews for their services and products, but it can be absolutely heartbreaking when a complaint gets out of hand.

Previously we wrote an article covering many of the issues to be considered by both businesses and consumers when providing online testimonials (you can read it here). In this article we really want to focus on helping consumers through the steps of providing a review or making a complaint so that the interests of all parties are protected. Most countries will have extensive consumer laws in place. These are there to help protect both business and consumers by providing rulings and guidelines on all manner of consumer law. In Australia the ACCC is the ruling body.

How to make an official complaint:

There are guidelines for making an official complaint, and we strongly recommend that the first point of call is always to contact the business direct, before heading to social media.

Make contact with the business as soon as possible

Don’t delay. A fairer outcome for all concerned comes with a timely complaint.

Make sure you state the complaint fairly and the outcome you are seeking (replacement of an item, refund, repair).

Have proof of purchase or any contract readily available as the business may request such documents as part of their complaints proceedings.

Be polite.

Put your complaint in Writing via email or a letter

It can assist to put your complaint in writing so that there are no misunderstandings. State your complaint and your desired outcome. Having your complaint in writing also helps to document the process.

The ACCC provide a handy tool to help you determine your rights. It is a general guide only, and does not constitute legal advice.

You can find the tool here: Use your rights

Be fair and reasonable

[clickToTweet tweet=”Keeping your cool is important. Remember to focus on the issue at hand and try to avoid confrontation.” quote=”Keeping your cool is important. Remember to focus on the issue at hand and try to avoid confrontation.”]

If things are getting heated, ask to speak to someone else, or tell them you will call again tomorrow because you are upset at the moment. Don’t allow emotion to cause further issues.

If you have not had any response, then posting a question or a tweet to a business asking them to respond, without any emotion attached does seem to make some businesses take action. Please do this respectfully and only after all other attempts have failed.

If you are not getting a resolution

Don’t continue to complain, after three attempts to resolve the issue, if you are still not happy or the business has not responded, your next step is to seek advice from either the ACCC or a third party.

The ACCC provides a list of places to go for help, you can access the list here.

If you are still not getting a satisfactory response, your step would be to obtain legal advice. Do not launch into an attack online or bombard the premises with abusive phone calls. None of this will help you to resolve the issue and you may find yourself being charged for harrassment or other charges. This leads us to talk about the elephant (troll) in the room. The use of social media for complaints.

Don’t become an accidental troll (or incite others to troll)

[clickToTweet tweet=”With businesses so accessible these days via social media, it can be tempting to launch into an attack on a business ” quote=”With businesses so accessible these days via social media, it can be tempting to launch into an attack on a business when you are feeling that your complaint has not been dealt with. “]

Complaining to friends can get them riled up too and sometimes we see cases of a disgruntled customer inciting their friends to write poor reviews and complaints against the business. This is unethical behaviour and further if the people writing the reviews have never used the business, they are in fact breaching laws around the creation of fake reviews. (see our previous article on writing testimonals here).

The risk of being charged under defamation laws will loom in this instance. If your friends do go on the defensive for you, ask them to please remove such reviews and complaints, to protect their own reputations. Publically launching into a personal attack on businesses or naming and shaming can often backfire and should not be part of your plan for resolution.

What if you have written a bad review and then the problem is resolved?

In this case do the right thing and at the very least add a comment to your review that the issue was resolved and thank them for the resolution. You may or may not choose to delete the review or amend it in other ways. You have the right to leave a review for a business provided it is truthful and not malicious.

When can’t you request a refund or cancel a service?

When it comes to services, under Australia law there are certain rights which the consumer has, but also there are times when you cannot cancel or request a refund. According to the ACCC website these include:

issues arising which were outside of the control of the provider,
because you just decide to change your mind after the service was completed
you have insisted on having a service provided in a particular way, against the provider’s advice
you failed to clearly explain your needs to the provider.

For example you engage a painter and you are told that the surface needs a primer. You insist this is not necessary and direct the painter to paint without the preparation. The paint starts to peel within weeks. You cannot request a refund because you have been given expert advice and chosen to go against it and insisted they do the work your way.

[clickToTweet tweet=”The area of complaints is one where emotions can run high on both sides.” quote=”The area of complaints is one where emotions can run high on both sides.”]

The above is general information only and should not be considered legal advice.

We are happy to continue research into this area and welcome discussion on the topic. Please however refrain from naming and shaming any organisation in your comments or using inappropriate language (we are a family friendly blog!).

You may also wish to read our article on etiquette and responding to complaints from the business side here.

August 26, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Adobe Spark makes a few changes

Getting creative with Adobe Spark

One of our favourite freemium products is Adobe Spark. It’s wonderful for creating images and video quickly and effectively. Up until now although you could remove branding on images, you could not on video. Adobe Spark is now opening up the ability to remove branding and add your own. It’s free for now but eventually will be a paid service, so if you do accept their offer, be aware of that. They are rolling out the offers to active users, so if you don’t have it yet, it shouldn’t be far away.

The fantastic news however is that if you are already a subscriber to Adobe Creative then this is part of your subscription as long as your subscription is current! Yay for that.

This is great news for social media and content managers.

So if you haven’t jumped on board the Adobe Spark train, why not give it a try.

There is an app version of both Adobe Post (for images) and Spark Video too although at this stage the branding may still be on videos created via the app.

One of the best things about Spark is it’s ability to help you get inspired. With lots of shared content you can look at for ideas and a vast collection of images on hand (and of course you can upload your own images as well).

We created this little video on the topic of inspiration because like many working in the field of social media, sometimes we have to remember just to stop and breathe, and take in our day and inspiration and content ideas will come.

It also serves as a lovely example of how Spark helps you to create simple and memorable video.

We hope you enjoy. Please share your experiences with Adobe Spark with us in the comments

Inspiration is all around us

May 30, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Facebook Live for Small Business

Tune in every Monday at 7:30pm Australian EST for our Facebook Live Mentoring Monday sessions.

We cover social media topics centred around building your online reputation and brand, from organic reach on facebook to avoiding scams! Join us!

Episode One: Don’t be Scammed

Episode Two: Legally Blindsided: Talking about defamation, copyright and reputation

Episode Three: Organic is Good for you (Organic Reach that is!)

Dont forget to follow us on Facebook so you get notified when we go LIVE! Click here to find us

January 19, 2016 By Fiona Lucas

Scam Alert – Beware of IQ Quiz it might cost you

Beware of Facebook IQ Test Scam

A few of our lovely community have let us know about a scam which is currently doing the rounds on Facebook. In this case the scam is in the form of an IQ Test which then requests your mobile number in order to send you the results.

DO NOT give such quizzes your phone number. Once you give the number you have no control over what they will do with it. You might find your number is sold onto telemarketing lists or worse still, as seems to be the case with this particular scam, when you send the number you are actually agreeing to a renewal payment, a monthly payment for the app which will be charged to your phone bill.

This is known as cramming According to Wikipedia Cramming is a form of fraud in which small charges are added to a bill by a third party without the subscriber’s consent or disclosure. These may be disguised as a tax or some other common fee, and may be several dollars or even just a few cents. The crammer’s intent is that the subscriber will overlook and ultimately pay these small charges.

[ctt title=”ALWAYS read the fine print” tweet=”ALWAYS read the fine print” coverup=”Ib_wj”]

It is important to read the fine print whenever you are giving away information such as your address, phone number or credit card details.

If you want to test your IQ, a few questions on a Quiz is unlikely to be enough. Let’s get smarter than the scammers.

A couple of years ago the Mary Sue site, wrote a post about such Quizzes and that we should understand they are the equivalent of one of those “what Disney Character are you?” type of quiz that regularly goes around. You can read her verdict here. It’s important to understand they are just a bit of fun, but for that reason our trust levels actually seem to be higher than if they were legitimately selling a product to measure IQ. Go figure, human nature is interesting isn’t it?

Recently there have been many posts about the types of information we give away in quizzes. Mark Wilson wrote one that gained quite a lot of traction, and although it’s not in depth, it does provide some insight into the way privacy statements are worded on quiz sites such as Meaww. His report can be found here.

We also wrote on our facebook page recently about scams and in particular that many facebook games ask to connect to your profile, but they ask for a more access than is required. Often they ask for access to your friends list and other details such as education etc. In particular be wary of those quizzes asking who your best friends are or who you should holiday with, in order to work they get access to all your data, so you haven’t just compromised your own privacy, but that of your friends as well.

These kinds of scams have been going around for many years. If you are not sure if something is a scam we are always happy to review for you.

SO remember: Don’t give away your phone number to Quizzes or you might end up with a nasty surprise in your next bill, and be wary of any quiz or game linking to facebook that asks for more than access to your profile to post your result, they are gleaning alot more information that you might like, and perhaps that of your friends.

July 16, 2015 By Fiona Lucas

Control your Facebook News Feed!

Good news for iPhone users initially, but Android and desktop to come. Last week Facebook gave back some control over who we see first in our Facebook News Feed via the Facebook app. As I mentioned, at this stage its iPhone first, but the rest wont be far behind.

Your News Feed is built up as a personalised stream from the Pages and people you connect to on Facebook. The idea is that you see the stories that matter most to you based on Facebook’s algorithm which ranks your feed according to who you interact with most and the type of content you tend to like, comment or share.

You now have the ability to prioritise the content based on your favourites.

Here’s how to do it.

Open your Facebook app on your iPhone (make sure you have the latest version of the app though!). Click on MORE (the three little lines on the bottom right) and scroll all the way down to the SETTINGS section. There you will see NEWS FEED PREFERENCES.

Start with the Blue star to prioritise who you see first. (You will still get other content in your newsfeed but the latest posts of these priorities will show in your feed first). (Note my example is only for the purposes of this and you cant change the order which connections appear (I would have loved to be able to sort alphabetically!). You will see the words SEE FIRST appear under their names along with the blue star.

Note this is different from CLOSE friends settings. With Close friends you receive notifications when they post. With See First you see posts from these people in your feed when you first open your app.

You can choose to unfollow people to hide post, reconnect with anyone you have unfollowed (they wont know). Remember if you do this that you will need to go and look for their latest posts.

There is also an option to discover new pages. For me lots of very disconnected pages appeared but that might be because working in the field I do so many searches and research for clients that poor old Facebook probably can’t decide what I like!

That’s it. Simple and easy but giving you some control back.

Hope you have enjoyed this post.

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Much respect!

Have a great day whereever you are.