Consumer, betrayed! ShoutOut.

Are you interested in making a consumer complaint?

Do you ever feel that you have been taken for a ride by a service provider? Ever felt like a fool after buying a product that does not do what was promised? How many times do you feel cheated, or shortchanged by service providers and well-known brands? Do you talk about it or fight it out with them?

Are you as happy as this consumer?

Consumer complaints serve a very important role in a free market society - it makes information available, and provides deterrence against consumer malpractices.

I understand that it is not always worth it to go to the consumer court and file a case that would take months to fight. What about making an online complaint?

There are actually a number of websites that are working into this domain - the one most well known have been started by an entrepreneur-lawyer Ankur Singla (Akosha.com).

Recently, I got a mail from the team at Shoutout.co.in  - Santosh AR and  Purushothaman wrote in about their venture that seeks to make consumer complaints more engaging. It seems to be a pretty good place to take action, quite easily.

About ShoutOut 

ShoutOut started as a public consumer complaints board this January to help Indian consumers fight back big companies who offer shoddy products/services.  The team feels that common man's awareness is poor about government consumer redressal forums and consumer court. People often give up their fight against shoddy products/services for lack of time or lack of confidence in judicial processes which can be costly and time consuming.

Keeping this in mind, ShoutOut wanted to build a solution. According to the team, companies fear bad publicity and jump if complaints against them are visible on ShoutOut's website which has reasonable visibility on search engine.

Experience of Running Shoutout

The website is  getting genuine complaints at rate of 2 to 3 complaints/day. "As a startup, we are learning everyday and want to grow organically on a scale which we can handle well. One of recent success story is where Bone Rich refunded a consumer after he posted a complaint on ShoutOut"  - according to Santosh AR, one of the founders. 

How is ShoutOut different

Santosh says that the consumer complaint market is now inundated with websites formed due to lure of online ad money, but in ShoutOut, they are 2 guys who have quit their jobs to pursue consumer complaints seriously and make a real impact. They actually call up the complainant, talk about complaint in detail, verify that person is genuine and complaint text is genuine. Then they ensure that all complaint details required for company to resolve are captured objectively.

They came up with an ingenious marketing material over here: http://shoutout.co.in/comic.html.

My two-bits

As lawyers and would be lawyers, it is highly recommended that you guys totally get intop consumer disputes. Use a summer to make life hell for a couple of bigshot companies, its more fun, more educative and gives more CV value than doing a paper pushing internship anywhere in established firms and advocates.

You can start by registering some complaints on shoutout.co.in - or maybe talk to them to see if you can help some hapless consumer with their fight for justice. You don’t have to be a qualified lawyer to argue at the consumer court.