I never go so far as to say that the customer is always right. I will go so far as saying that the customer is the customer.

As you know, I have a few ads on this blog. I have more ads on other blogs and websites of mine. This is known as affiliate marketing; if someone buys something from any of those ads, or clicks on some of those ads, I get paid. Or at least I'm supposed to get paid.

Almost two weeks ago there was a purchase on one of my websites. I know that because I was informed that someone bought something directly from me. However, I never got credit for the sale. That happens here and there, and usually all you have to do is contact the affiliate, give them the receipt number, and they'll take care of it.

In this case, I haven't been able to get a response back from them. Also, it took me awhile to get a response back from the affiliate company that acts as the go-between for me and my affiliates. It took a couple of messages before I heard back from them, and when I heard from them, I didn't like the response I got. From my perspective, I didn't take the time to write an informative letter telling them my issue only to get a one line response back.

So, what have I done? Since it's an online company, I outed them; the name is 101Phones.com. Now, here's the deal. When I wrote about the issue on one of my other blogs, my posts automatically go on Twitter, which means everyone who follows me on Twiitter saw that post, since the business name was in the title and what they did to me was also in the title. A few of those people did what's known as a retweet, which means they passed on what I posted to people who follow them. I'm not sure if it went any further officially.

However, the die is cast. At this point at least 3,000 people have seen my original post, and I can only imagine how many others have seen it after that. And I've had a few people who've visited my blog and read and commented on that post as well. The company still hasn't contacted me, and I figure after 3 emails they're not going to. There is no phone number to call for satisfaction either, so I guess I'm out of my commission. My hope is that no one else gets caught up in the deceptive practices of this company.

These days, the word can spread really quickly against a company who does you wrong. A couple of weeks ago I know someone who was having a bad experience at a hotel, and she posted it on Twitter while she was still there. Someone from the corporate office immediately saw it, contacted her through Twitter, and arranged for her to go to a better hotel in the same town and to stay there for free. That's the power one has to deal with in today's world. It doesn't do anyone any good to treat customers badly, because the word can get out, and at that point your business might be in trouble. If you didn't do wrong, you can always fight back, but the damage might be done.

Good customer service doesn't take all that much work. If you think it does, try more bad customer service practices and ssee how well your business fares long term.