New forum section for complaints

I know the fora are an important means of getting the word out about the agony that the wronged car owners experience. The frustration then comes out in any forum, and any thread that they happen to read and participate in.

I have seen that these complaints pop up in Articles, Review comments, Reviews (these are meant to be car reviews rather than dealership reviews) buying a car section, maintain a car section (when the service experience is  bad) or any other part of the forum.

This not only messes up ongoing discussions but also makes people think of these complaints in a harsher light, and the sympathy, attention and responses they get are less. The complainers are seen as pests rather than the harrassed individuals as they are.

To help improve the situation, let us start a forum named Complaints so that it is easier for everybody. It could be in Buying a Car or Maintain car section, or anywhere suitable but it should get a prominant visibility, so people don't make a mess anywhere they like. No disrespect meant, but I am worried about the forum space looking like a garbage dump with people posting whatever they like wherever they like.

I second.

I suggest the title of the section should be more self-explicit (so that there's no confusion), say for instance: "Complaints / Bad Experiences you have had".

Edit:  If feasible, it would be better if User Reviews from Research Section that are in the form of complaints, are also moved to the section proposed (instead of Review Section).

I agree to what you say, Krishna. But my only worry is that giving a dedicated complaints section may invoke OEM-owned spammers to give bad names to other OEMs. We need to have certain format and ask for certain required data (e.g. Engine No and Chassis No etc). The whole idea is to:

- Give consumers a platform to speak out about what's gone wrong or who in the auto eco-system has been unfair to them.

- Give manufacturers a platform to consolidate the complaints and take an action on it, if at all they want to. If we have some specific data to track down the core issue, it would be useful for them. Mere talks such as "I went to XYZ dealer and a workshop guy there did this to my car" won't help.

Of course the entire data won't come in maybe one post but we should try putting up a sticky thread on "How to post in complaints section".

What do you guys think?

Yes, having 'complaint section' along with Sticky thread will help serve the purpose better.

Banwari, if CW is going that far, take it all the way through, and convert it into a CRM facility for OEMs. Let there be a template for entering data that will not be made public, and will be forwarded to the concerned people in that department for that particular mfr  / dealer/distributor chain.

Let there be SLAs - Service Level Agreements with the guys who deal with complaints - 1 day for preliminary investigation and confirmation of the incident and credentials, say 3 days for getting a detailed report, and 7 days to resolving the issue with justification.

CW can streamline the interaction, and also bring the various actors in these difficult circumstances on a single page. This will help OEMs avoid the backlash like Skoda has been seeing for their products, and will overall benefit the company because of word of mouth and online praise.

Am I going too far?

PS: I realize washing all this dirty linen in public is kind of inconvenient to the company, but if all of these complaints are dealt with all the interaction public, it will generate huge praise and goodwill for the company who might be interested in doing it. To keep it manageable, low volume companies like VW, BMW, Audi, can be supported first, as their service and redressal network will also be limited. Then as everyone gets a hang of it, let everyone else jump it. The idea would have proven itself by then.

Good suggestion.  Can be considered seriously once the new/proposed section is streamlined.

Not 2 far but you did take 2 steps at a time. Lol.