complaints
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Amazon will soon directly address claims over faulty marketplace products
Amazon is updating its return policy to make it easier for customers to file complaints over defective products from third party marketplace sellers.
Peloton users stuck with 'terrible tunes' following licensing lawsuit
Connected exercise bike maker Peloton was hit with a $150 million lawsuit last month for playing unlicensed music, and now its customers are feeling the fall out. Owners of the machines, which cost up to $4,000 each, have taken to the internet to complain about the poor music selection now accompanying their $468 annual workout membership.
The FCC could ask you to pay to complain
A proposed rule change at the FCC has raised concerns that the organization is attempting to abdicate its responsibilities to the public. This Thursday, the Commission will consider altering its complaints-handling procedure between individuals and their service providers.
Airbnb allows neighbors to tattle on noisy guests
Airbnb says most of its users are "respectful travelers," but just in case an issue does come up, it's giving those who live near a rental a place to voice concerns. The company's new initiative, Airbnb Neighbors, gives folks a tool for voicing concerns about noise, parking, use of a common space, suspicious/criminal activity and general concerns. Once a complaint is received, it gets a case number and Airbnb reviews the issue. If necessary, the company says it will follow up with the listing's host.
The FCC is already getting thousands of net neutrality complaints
Net Neutrality. The internet as a public utility. Hooray? The FCC is already receiving a lot of complaints from customers that are sick of data caps, slow speeds and possibly uncompetitive prices. According to the National Journal, a lot of the ire has been directed at a predictable list of offenders: AT&T, Comcast and Verizon -- a company that now owns AOL. So far there's no proof of violating net neutrality rules where service providers are blocking or otherwise slowing web services. But as these providers are reclassified as carriers, it lets customers complain when they feel that what the companies are doing are unreasonable. If you've got a complainin' itch to scratch, you can file your own over on the FCC's website. These entries are forwarded to the offending carrier, which has to respond within 30 days.
EE fined £1 million for not properly dealing with complaints
As part of its job as the communications industry regulator, Ofcom routinely checks to see if UK mobile carriers are doing a good job of looking after their customers. This includes how they log complaints and what they do once they've received them. After almost three years of investigation, the watchdog announced today that Britain's (current) largest operator, EE, hasn't properly handled customer complaints and has issued it with a £1 million fine.
FCC appoints an ombudsperson to hear your complaints
As it promised when it made broadband a "Title II" utility, the FCC now has an ombudsperson in charge of "open internet questions and complaints." The regulator appointed Parul P. Desai to the job, who previously worked as communications policy counsel for the non-profit society behind Consumer Reports. If you've got a beef, you'll be able to contact her office by phone, email or the "file a complaint" section of the FCC's consumer complaints website. Chairman Tom Wheeler first dropped the idea of an ombudsperson last year when he decided to forge ahead with new net neutrality rules.
FCC eyes quicker responses to service complaints with new website
If you're ready to air those grievances with your current cable, internet or phone service, the FCC has a new site to collect those complaints. The Commission's Consumer Help Center provides a list of common gripes concerning both broadcast and cable TV, radio, emergency communications and access for those folks with disabilities -- in addition to the aforementioned topics. It also provides tips on how to resolve the issue(s), and if you'd like, you can file a complaint without perusing the list to see where yours fits. Once submitted, each grumble is assigned a tracking number that will allow you to keep tabs on its status. They're sent directly to each network or service provider, and require a written response in 30 days that you'll get a copy of, too. [Photo credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]
Ofcom slaps Three with a £250,000 fine for failing to handle customer complaints
While Three is currently the UK's fastest-growing network, it certainly can't rest on its laurels. In fact, it's just been given a sharp wake-up call, after Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, handed the carrier a £250,000 fine over its inadequate handling of customer grievances. According to the watchdog, Three closed complaints before they were fully resolved and was guilty of not logging complaint calls from customers when it should have done. While it now has to hand over a cool quarter of a million to appease Ofcom (which is then absorbed by the Treasury), Three has apparently sorted out its internal processes and is now compliant with regulations -- good news if you enjoy the carrier's unlimited tariffs but weren't so impressed by its customer service.
EVE Evolved: Wormholes should be more dangerous
When unstable wormholes began forming all over the EVE Online universe in 2009's Apocrypha expansion, players approached them with extreme caution. The promise of riches in the form of new loot and Tech 3 cruiser components was balanced by the incalculable risk of facing a powerful new enemy in untested circumstances. Between the Sleeper AI that had been reported to melt players' ships in seconds and the player pirates taking advantage of the hidden local chat channel to sneak up on unsuspecting victims, we had no idea whether any ship we sent into a wormhole would ever make it back out again. The risk of venturing into something truly unknown made wormhole exploration the single most exciting thing I've ever been a part of in an MMO, but the past five years have completely eroded that danger. Farmers now know exactly what to expect in every wormhole site and can efficiently farm Sleepers with the minimum of effort or risk, and PvP alliances can rapidly cycle through systems to find weak targets to attack. We've mapped and tamed all of the wormhole frontier, systematically reducing the risk to the lowest possible levels under the current game mechanics. Tuesday's Hyperion update aimed to shake things up with a few disruptive changes designed to keep wormholes dangerous, and I think it's a definite step in the right direction. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at some of the changes in Hyperion designed to keep wormholes dangerous and ask what more could be done to keep things interesting.
Post-acquisition Motorola files fresh ITC complaint against Apple
We hope you didn't think that Motorola would fight a purely defensive patent war against Apple after Google's acquisition closed. Just days before a final ruling on its initial complaints, the RAZR maker has filed another dispute with the International Trade Commission that accuses Apple of violating patents through some iOS devices and Macs. Exact details of the dispute are under wraps for now; Motorola, as you'd imagine, only contends that it has no choice after Apple's "unwillingness to work out a license." While Apple hasn't said anything about the subject, we already know how much it disagrees with Motorola's previous licensing strategy -- it's unlikely Apple will just roll over, no matter what's at stake.
Mass Effect moaners kinda get their own way as people power strikes again
SPOILERS. Who can't name a beloved TV series that didn't end the way you wanted? BSG? Lost? Sapphire and Steel? Blake's Seven? Quantum Leap? The Sopranos? All of which ended either with tear-inducing bum-notes or confusing conclusions that caused furious head scratching. Despite that, the traditional reaction is to say "Well, I didn't enjoy that, but I respect the writer's artistic decision." Not so for gamers who felt short-changed by the intentionally devastating conclusion to Mass Effect 3. Fans of the game poured their outrage online, developer BioWare saying that the feedback it had received was "incredibly painful." A fan campaign that raised $80,000 in under a fortnight for Child's Play was enough to make the team behind the title concede defeat against the geo-political disruptor that is the internet with a cause. The company is now devoting all of its efforts to producing an "extended cut" DLC for the summer, but fans expecting a fourth ending where they can watch Commander Shepard on a sun-lounger, margarita in hand had better start complaining now -- the new content will only offer more depth and an extended epilogue to those tragic scenes you've already witnessed. SPOILERS END
Better Business Bureau lists AT&T as having lowest complaint rate among mobile carriers
Here at TUAW, we still hear plenty of complaints about AT&T's service (many of them actually directed at AT&T, but sent to us for some reason). But the Better Business Bureau says we're actually in a good spot -- AT&T apparently has the lowest amount of complaints from major carriers coming through that agency out of all of the various cell phone service providers. Note that they are referring to major carriers: smaller regional carrier Metro PC actually had the lowest number, but of course they don't service nearly as many people. Verizon was second best among the major carriers in the US, then Sprint, and T-Mobile brought up the rear, with 26,387 complaints over the last few years. There's good news, though -- data from last year shows that 95% of the complaints to the BBB about wireless issues were actually resolved. So apparently the squeaky wheel does get the grease. Obviously, there are a lot of factors here -- just because a company does or doesn't get a lot of BBB complaints doesn't necessarily reflect 1:1 on its service. But clearly not many of the people supposedly disappointed with AT&T have gone off to the Better Business Bureau for help. [via BGR]
Officers' Quarters: The strategy behind casual motivation
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. A guild's raiding suffers most when your players feel entitled to rewards without making the effort to earn them. Part of what makes leading a hardcore raiding guild easier in some respects than leading a casual raiding guild is that your players are always motivated to do their best to succeed. This week, an officer asks how she can motivate her casual raiders to meet some basic requirements and get a second team up and running. Hi Scott, We run a small casual raiding guild on a server that isn't very progressed. We currently have one successful 10-man team, and have been trying to get a second one off the ground since February. We have some lenient requirements for raiders to pass: they must be willing to listen on Vent, have DBM installed, be appropriately gemmed, enchanted and glyphed, and as of 4.1, have an ilevel of 346. The raiders in the current 10-man team had no problem with this at all, but the people who would comprise the second team, and complain about wanting to raid, have put in very little effort towards actually raiding. At the time of writing this, it's June -- we have endured 4 months of trying to get this team off the ground, 4 months of complaining, and 4 months of trying to help these people get a raid happening, to no avail.
Officers' Quarters: The constant complainers
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. Just about every guild has its complainers. The bigger your community, the more you'll have to deal with members who think you're single-handedly out to drive the guild into the ground, and they are the only ones standing between you and wholesale destruction. Perhaps I'm overdramatizing, but sometimes it can certainly feel that way. Some complainers can be positively relentless. This week's email comes from an officer who's afraid the complaints are about to force his guild leader to take drastic action. Hey, I'm an officer of a medium-sized raiding guild that currently has two 10-mans and working on getting a third. During ICC we had three 10-mans, which we will call A, B, C and a 25-man [...] When we began raiding, we only had enough raiders to form one 10-man Raid A. Two months later, we got enough people to form another raid B, and a few weeks after that we form the last one Raid C. Everything was going good, all the raids where progressing [at] a similar pace, we down Lich King a few times, did a few heroic modes, than decided to close down our 25-man raid a few weeks before Cataclysm because of attendance issues. Than a bombshell dropped, one of our raiders (we shall call him Jon[...]) posted that he was concerned with our move to 10-man raiding in Cataclysm (basically not having a raid). We quickly addressed this issue saying that there would be two 10-mans at least with the possibility of a third, Problem solved, at least we thought. Then one of our [raiders] (who we will call Bob) posted a very long post on forums. He stated that while the GL [...] and I were excellent guild leaders [...] the other officers were effectually a joke. He went on to say that the Guild does not come together on anything, stating the last guild event he considered significant was our last ICC 25-man raid. Stated that during most days there is maybe five people online, "A WoW guild that does not raid, dies." (Despite us saying that we are done raiding until Cataclysm.) [...]
FCC going after cellphone jammers, could land users in the slammer
The FCC has put a bounty on the heads of all the cellphone-hating vigilantes out there. These GPS and signal jammers are particularly popular amongst theaters, quiet restaurants and in many school systems fighting the good fight against sexting during class. The FCC is calling on folks to stop and to report their neighbors for using these devices -- reason being that they pose serious health and safety risks by interfering with 911 calls and other emergencies in the vicinity. So if you know a so-called 'jammer,' don't hesitate to file a complaint about them to the FCC -- the info can be found at the source link below.
Clearwire throttling at-home WiMAX users?
Ah, throttling. Can't ever seem to fully shake it, can we? Just weeks after hearing about a similar issue with the Epic 4G, scores of Clear at-home WiMAX users are now up in arms over apparent throttling on certain accounts. As the story goes, it seems as if the company is pulling back on upload and download speeds (from 10Mbps to around 0.25Mbps) for users who have consumed between 7GB and 10GB in a month, which is comically low even compared to Comcast's hated 250GB / month usage cap. Forum users are finding customer service lines to be no help whatsoever, and some digging has found that this may all be a part of a network traffic administration program that's ongoing within Clearwire. Have any of you seen similar issues? How much data are you sucking down per month? Does your usage clock still show up in your account profile? Let us know in comments below. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
The Mog Log: Community watch
The summer slump is just about over, and those who have enjoyed an entire summer away from school are going to have to get back into the swing of it in the very near future. The rest of us will simply have to acclimate ourselves to the decrease in the temperature, the decrease in big-budget movies, and the increase in game release schedules. But there's one last gasp of summer to be had, and let's spend it watching our favorite ongoing entertainment: community forum discussions. There's no shortage of topics for discussion lately, what with Final Fantasy XIV stampeding ever closer to launch, Final Fantasy XI's September version update stampeding ever closer, and various other stampedes taking place somewhere. (I kind of started that sentence without a conclusion prepared.) September is going to be a busy month in general, and even with a couple weeks to go there's a lot of talk being flung around. So let's get right into the meat of the community, shall we?
iPhone 4 press conference, by the numbers
Apple dropped a lot of interesting numbers during the press conference this morning, from both their own research and AT&T's data. Steve Jobs also said that three million iPhone 4s have been sold to date, so let's put this into perspective. .55 percent: This is the percentage of iPhone 4 users who have contacted AppleCare regarding antenna or reception issues. This comes out to only 16,500 AppleCare cases. We are not sure if this includes issues related to the proximity sensor; however, Jobs later acknowledged in the press conference that the proximity sensor will be addressed in a future software update. 1.7 percent: This is the number of iPhone 4s returned to AT&T since the initial release 22 days ago, which comes out to roughly 51,000 returns. By contrast, 6 percent of iPhone 3GS were returned in its early days -- and the numbers of those sold are lower than the iPhone 4. The final number is that AT&T is reporting that less than one more call per 100 placed is dropped compared to the iPhone 3GS -- more calls are dropped than the earlier model, but it's only one more per one hundred. However, as was said in our liveblog discussion, this number probably does not take into account the calls that failed to connect in the first place.
iBurgh complaint department for iPhone gets to the heart of city living
As anybody who lives in a mid-sized American city knows, the only good reason to contact the mayor's office is to complain about something. Now Pittsburgh, which usually only graces this site when one of its universities develops a robot or a weapon of some sort, has put its own high-tech spin on this with iBurgh. Described by city councilman Bill Peduto as "the first mobile application for city government," the app lets iPhone owners snap a picture of their favorite eyesore or attractive nuisance, attach a quick note, and send the geotagged information to the city's 311 operators. Not only is this good for potholes and gridlocked traffic, but it's sure to be a hit among rioting college students the next time the Steelers win some sort of big game -- and if you don't know what we're talking about, just punch +steelers +riot into Google. And then hit the read link to download for yourself. [Via KDKA,Thanks Dan H.]
