Consumer Affairs Pro Sees Light; Plans to Spread It
Sometimes, even a consumer affairs professional can’t get satisfaction.
“I remembered thinking that, ‘Oh, boy, this thing is out of control,’ ” recalled Ted Uhler, who handles community relations for Cox Cable San Diego, the nation’s largest cable system operator.
Uhler was describing a recent run-in with the service department of a garage that was repairing his car. “It got to the point where I almost had to threaten them with a small claims case,” he recalled.
A supposedly routine repair job had gone awry, Uhler said, and his car was knocked out of commission for an undetermined number of days. The service manager had turned “abrupt and negative,” Uhler said. “They’d given my car to an absolutely new employee, and he’d done something terribly wrong.”
Power Is the Key
“There’s a sense of almost powerlessness built into the complaint situation, but a good professional complaint handler makes the complainer feel that (he does) have power,” Uhler said. “That’s the key to success, power, not just the feeling of power.”
Uhler got his car back, along with a heightened awareness of the damage caused by a poorly handled complaint.
“Statistics indicate that a person with a complaint will spread bad news to an average of 10 people . . .,” Uhler said. “A person with a positive experience will spread it to an average of five people.”
Uhler and several other San Diego consumer affairs professionals want to form a local chapter of the Arlington, Va.-based Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals. The nearest SOCAP chapter is in Los Angeles, according to Joanne Reel, consumer affairs coordinator for San Diego Gas & Electric.
Similar Problems
A local chapter would boost consumer affairs because the profession is “just kind of coming of its own in most businesses, and we’re struggling to (discover) what we really mean to our organizations,” Reel said.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a telephone company, an airline or a radio station,” Reel said. “We’re all dealing with the same consumers and the same kind of problems.”
In addition to helping consumer affairs people keep tabs on professional advances, Reel said, creation of a local SOCAP chapter is important because the national organization tracks important legislation.
“What happens to one company will probably happen to another company, and how (one company) handles legislation could help another company later on,” Reel said.
Reel said consumer affairs can bring positive results for consumers and companies. “I’m in charge of (SDG&E;’s) consumer outreach program that brings in representatives of the community to have dialogue sessions with management,” she said. “It brings management closer to the public, and management is the decision maker.
“When they make decisions in future, they’ll have something in the back of the mind” from those outreach sessions, Reel said.
