Grumbletext, UK consumer complaints -

Internet Magazine, p90, issue 104, June 2003

HEADLINE: Grumbletext; Reviews: Sites.

BYLINE: Daniel Harvey

Complaining just isn't any fun now that Anne Robinson is famous.

Nowadays, instead of defending our consumer honour, the BBC's Watchdog programme seems to devote an inordinate amount of hi-tech, lo-script resources to making Nicky Campbell look [more] like a half-wit. What's needed is a new consumer champion.

One candidate for the job is Grumbletext. By marrying the miracle of the Internet with the wonder of mobile phones, Web design company LiveWebs has come up with a new means of consumer recourse for the text age.

Disappointed with a purchase? Victim of shoddy service? Send a text message to 078108383 83 for the cost of a normal text message and see your complaint satisfyingly displayed on the Grumbletext site in full view of the rest of the world.

Given that making a complaint against a company is an increasingly futile and time-consuming process, we welcome any site which tries to make firms smarten op their service. However, Grumbletext currently straddles the fence between being an anything-goes bulletin board and the respectable forum it needs to be to persuade big-name brands to amend their ways.

What appears on the site is a list of gripes grouped by subject. Firms which receive a lot of grumbles are posted a report to make them aware of their unhappy customers. They can then respond on the site or send an apology to customers.

While the site is moderated, messages are automatically posted using an SMS/FC interface which puts texts into Live Webs' own software and uploads them into Frontpage templates. This is great for letting individuals let off steam, but we think more work needs to be done to extract the interesting points from unedited texts.

Grumbletext has the potential to become a must-have bookmark, but only with a lot more quality control -- vital if companies are to sit up and take the site seriously.

Adrian Harris, the man behind LiveWebs, hopes to make his crust from companies paying to send apology texts to disenfranchised consumers, and through 'associative' advertising -- similar in style to the groovy but loosely related, 'fun stuff' links on the site. We hope the money comes pouring in soon -- and when it does, we recommend Grumbletext gets a good Web designer on board.

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