How to make your complaint count

Your hotel was dirty—in fact you could almost swear the sheets moved on their own. The server at your fancy restaurant spilled wine on you and was exceedingly rude. Your all-inclusive holiday plan didn’t include everything you thought it would. The airline cancelled yet another of your flights while trying to get home. When faced with challenges or realities that are vastly different from expectations, especially when on holiday, it can be tough to shake the disheartened feeling and enjoy your time away from home.

It’s easy to gripe and moan about the problems you face, but how can you make it right? Instead of holding a personal vendetta against a place or event or person, it’s time to voice your complaints to see if you can recoup some of your investments or, at the very least, get some closure on what went wrong. Here’s how to make your complaints about the holiday from hell count.

Review before you book anything.

You’ve heard of plenty of websites that offer user-submitted reviews of places all over the world: from the most well-known hotels, to the most obscure. Regardless, when you are trying to figure out where you are going to stay, always, ALWAYS read the reviews. It’s a pre-emptive measure to try and avoid known issues and problems with a place instead of having to deal with them after the fact. This goes for hotels, for airlines, for travel agents and for rental car shops. When you go into a holiday with background information on a place, the chances for being disgruntled or needing to make a complaint go down significantly.

Get in touch as soon as the problem happens.

Expediency is a key part of making a complaint count. If something goes wrong at any point during your holiday, get in touch with the proper company as soon as possible. Not when you get home, not after you wait a while to see if it’ll get resolved—immediately. If you are flying, pre-programme your airline’s contact information and help line into your phone so you can get instant access to their customer service representatives. If you are staying at a chain hotel, do the same. Talking to actual people while you are still on the scene will be way easier than dialling a number a week later.

Emergency assistance is available from most travel insurance companies (like youGo), so contact immediately should you have an issue.

Keep records of problems.

The more thorough your records are of the incident(s), the more likely you are to get someone’s attention—and keep it. Write down the names of people you speak with, keep all of your receipts, confirmation numbers, tickets and any other relevant documentation. If you’ve emailed back and forth with any representatives be sure to include this in your documentation—dates, names, conversation logs—it will all help.

If the problem is something visible, like uncleanliness, broken accessories or more, take a photo to include in the records, and to bolster your claims ticket.

Stick with it.

If you haven’t heard back or feel ignored, then stick with it. Continue to follow-up with the company any way you know how: phone, email, written letters, social media, etc. Clearly state your complaint, suggest a (reasonable) resolution, stay polite, and give them contact information where they can reach you.

Take further action.

If your complaint still isn’t taken seriously, or dealt with to your satisfaction, it’s time to contact a consumer organization for more advice. These folks will have the knowledge and background to help you with your specific problem and, depending on their reach, they may be able to put you in touch with the right service folks who can get your complaint heard and resolved.

Tips for more productive complaining

• Consider travel insurance for additional protection against potential problems, like the ones listed above, and more. Be sure to read your policy closely to understand exactly what your policy will and will not cover.
• Turn to social media—respectfully. Air your complaints on Twitter or Facebook with a link to the company’s profile and you are likely to catch the eye of anyone monitoring their sites. Responses on social media can be swift and helpful—significantly more so than sitting on a help centre call.
• Try to be as polite and friendly as possible when speaking with representatives. As cathartic as it would be to scream and yell and babble about how upset you are (rightfully so), you will get closer to a resolution if you stay friendly, positive and understanding on the phone.
• If all else fails, take your complaint to small claims court. This will take more time, effort and money, but if the complaint is important to you, this is another avenue for pursuing restitution.