THE ISSUE.

ACSA has dedicated resources for the purposes of providing aid to consumers or merchants who have complaints regarding practices or other members in the Computer and Telecommunications Industry.  Our motto is: "We are concerned about consumers: consumer safety and satisfaction insures that this industry will succeed."

BACKGROUND.

In recent years, with the advent of the Internet, many companies have adopted procedures which make it increasingly difficult for customers with a problem to get them resolved satisfactorily. 

For example, in management circles, the use of automated telephone attendants presumes that the choices provided will handle the majority of cases for concern, while also successfully capturing and handling 100% of the "revenue providing" telephone contacts.  That has been augmented through use of forms and limited email points of contact over the web, and in some businesses, Chat systems. 

As time has gone on, with increasing reliance on low cost labor via off shore call centers, a strange thing has happened: companies have fallen gradually out of touch with their customers who are having problems, consumers have become increasingly frustrated with the lack of attention their particular problem can obtain, unresolved complaints have backlogged and incentives for Call Centers to handle more and more workload versus manpower on board, has resulted in shorter and reduced customer support. And in some cases, management, under pressure to produce lower and lower expenses, and more and more competitively priced computer products, have abandoned even the most remedial customer support in exchange for lower cost, believing their growth and financial strength will outweigh the enormous animus of anger, frustration and sense of betrayal that gives rise among their customer base.

The consequences: a literal volcano of consumer frustration has yielded everything from Internet Fraud Bureau sites, to vendor monitor sites that are little more than concentrations of venom, hate and even those capitalizing on the consumer anger over vendor's failing to attend to their problem.

We have documented cases of such hate sites in the past (not without being sued by the object of those hate sites trying to repress our publication of the sites).  In response to the efforts by some to pressure vendors into paying attention to their consumers with problems, instead of fixing those consumers' problems, many of those complained of vendors have RESORTED TO SUING ANYONE WHO POINTS OUT THE CHAIN OF ANTI-VENDOR RESENTMENT BY POINTING TO ALL THE WEB SITES LOADED WITH COMPLAINTS ABOUT THEM.  Vendors who behave that way are, in our opinion, living in self-denial and are leaving a time bomb ticking away in their customer affairs base, a time bomb waiting to go off and destroy their business. 

We at ACSA have been watching the rising tide of unsatisfied consumer gripes and complaints and are very surprised at how easy most of them could be resolved in a manner beneficial to most of the vendors involved.  We have come to believe the foregoing phenomenon is the worst series of events to ever occur in the Computer Industry.  We believe it is a fatal chain of events that eventually catches up with each and ever vendor who sacrifices customer satisfaction in this fatal manner.  We believe that instead of making progress, the "Vendor Credibility Gap" is beginning to damage vendors throughout our industry in ways most of them haven't the capacity to recognize.

And so, we have decided and dedicated ourselves to providing aid to those with problems that we are able to verify, by taking steps to document the problem and best solution, both publicly and to the vendor in question.  If you have such an aid request, please lodge it using the yellow button at the top of this page.

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