Grumbletext, UK consumer complaints - Grumbletext website launched

London, 5th February 2003

LiveWebs Ltd, a London-based tech start-up, announced today the launch of its innovative Grumbletextï¿½ service, targeted at UK consumers.

Grumbletextï¿½ invites consumers to text their consumer 'grumbles' about UK companies to be automatically published directly on the Grumbletext website, at www.grumbletext.co.uk.

It also plans to create consumer interest news stories based on that content and actively work with the media to achieve maximum impact.

Adrian Harris, Grumbletext's founder, said: "We aim to help UK consumers give deserving UK companies a damn good public relations trashing. Texting is a great way to vent your spleen on a company because you tend to have your mobile with you at exactly the moment when you are most irritated - and the popularity of the medium gives us a fighting chance of getting the sort of volume of consumer opinion together which companies simply cannot afford to ignore".

"Intelligent companies will use the site as a resource to better understand their customers. However, the very companies receiving the most venomous barrage from their customers are likely to be precisely those who have failed to listen in the past - those whose treatment of customers often suggests a breathtaking level of cynicism".

Sending a Grumbletext is simple; you begin your text with the name of the company you want to grumble about, 'Bigbank' for example, followed by a colon. After the colon, you write your message then send it to the Grumbletext number, 07810 83 83 83 (normal cost at the moment, although the company plans to introduce the 25p texting tariff later this year). The site automatically publishes your message on a page devoted to the company. The home page also features a live 'Latest Grumbletexts' billboard and all new pages are automatically included in the menus and so forth.

So in the above case, your full message might read: 'Bigbank: get more sense from talking to my budgie than I do from their under-trained call centre agents', and within minutes this message is published on the Bigbank Grumbletext page.

Subjects do not have to be limited to companies as the website makes clear; institutions, politics and politicians for example are all permitted - the policy is that the target of the text should be publicly accountable at some level. The site also provides relevant links to other consumer sites, such as the award-winning consumer reviews site dooyou.co.uk.

As an example of what can be achieved when the consumer voice is activated by the media, Harris refers to the 'case' of the Sunday Times versus the Woolwich, in which the paper's Business Correspondent Rupert Steiner successfully rallied readers in a campaign which lead to improvements in customer service, a special new helpline and, although the Woolwich insists this was not linked, the eventual resignation of the chief executive who had been personally implicated from the outset.

Harris said; "It was a delight to witness as the Woolwich finally began to squirm, but it takes the sort of concerted effort which Steiner put into it over several weeks. Companies tend to get around to listening to the concerns of their customers only when the volume of protest begins to publicly threaten their carefully cultivated reputations; we want to be the megaphone consumers use to turn up the volume and get themselves heard".

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