Many different consumer scams exist. Some of the most common scams include work-from-home, credit repair, email, weight loss, and foreclosure rescue scams. Consumers have to be careful of any person or business trying to sell something. But sellers sometimes have to be just as careful of consumers.
Business owners have to deal with all kinds of complaints from customers. In order to keep their customers, they have to try and make them happy. Many owners and managers have the motto that "the customer is always right."
Every type of business receives complaints. Usually, the companies that deal with many customers in a short span of time receive the most complaints. The best examples are fast food restaurants. These companies attempt to provide quality food quickly with good customer service to a large amount of people. This situation provides consumers with a variety of potential reasons to complain.
Many customers will do anything to get something free. The most common scam is for a consumer to ask for his money back after using a product or eating a meal. The consumer will lie and use the excuse that the product or food was unsatisfactory.
This scam occurs frequently at restaurants. The customer will eat the majority of a meal and then complain about the quality. The customer will then ask for his or her money back. If the restaurant agrees, the customer gets a free meal at the seller's expense. Some consumers will try this scam in every restaurant in their area. It has a high degree of success.
Clothing stores also frequently have to deal with this scam. Customers will wear clothing to important events and then return the items on the basis that they're unsatisfied. Stores lose money because they can't sell obviously worn clothes.
Another scam is for the customer to complain about bad service. The customer might act like he or she has been insulted and wants his or her money returned. This scam also occurs frequently at restaurants because there's a lot of interaction between customers and waitstaff.
Another scam is the placement of foreign objects into food. It can be as simple as a hair or as serious as a body part. A woman complained a few years ago that she bit a human finger that was in her bowl of chili from a well-known restaurant. It turned out to be a scam.
Businesses can lose large amounts of money after customers complain falsely. A restaurant can lose millions of dollars from the bad publicity of a finger-in-the-food type scam. Clothing stores must deal with a large amount of returned merchandise that can never be sold. Many times, businesses have to increase prices to recover the lost money. These higher prices are passed to the consumers who are honest.
Customers aren't always right. Businesses have to learn when to say "no" to a customer. They have to decide if they want the future business of an angry and unreasonable consumer. No owner or manager should put up with a customer that yells at or abuses the staff. Employees are valuable and should be treated with respect. The better employees are treated, the better they usually treat the customers.
A business should never reward bad behavior. It's not fair if bad customers receive better treatment than good customers just because they cause problems. Businesses need to make sure the good customers keep coming back.
Many customer complaint scams can be stopped before there's too much damage. Businesses should only go so far to make a customer happy. Customers aren't always right. Sometimes, they're just plain wrong.
