People like to complain, that’s not exactly true, but people complain far more often than what they compliment. And it’s understandable. When paying for a service, one expects a certain level. If one receives this, great, they did what they said they would, this was expected, why would I tell anyone about it. But when our expected level of service isn’t reached, we feel founded in complaining.

A while ago I was introduced to a web-service called Hello Peter. It’s a directory of hundreds of local and national companies in South Africa, where people can go list comments on their experiences with these companies. This gives people the opportunity to complain about companies, but it’s also a nice way to get an idea of a company’s reputation.

Companies are allowed to assign an employee to address complaints and compliments on the site. So if people go and make accusations, they have the opportunity to reply and one can hear from both sides.

As is human nature, most of the companies generally have a negative rating on the site, that is more complaints than compliments. But scanning over comments and reading replies one can get a feel for the company.

I’ve used the service on several occasions when wanting to use new companies. I find, that especially when it comes to online based companies, one never knows what kind of service to expect.

I’ve often restrained myself from making complaints on the website, ’cause I feel they may be frivolous, so instead I looked around at the ratings that companies I’ve used in the past have received, and decided to make my fist rating a positive to a company that I’ve had nothing but great service from, but that has received several complaints.

Human nature isn’t going to change any time soon, but people always appreciate a complimen,t even if it is just for doing what’s expected of them.