Another Brilliant Idea

Ok, I’ve been to the new doctor and we’re not off to a good start. Oh, he’s fine and I like him so far. But, I had an 8:30 appointment; the first one of the day. And I finally saw the doctor at 9:15. That’s 45 minutes late. I know there are far worse stories than mine. But those usually involve surgeons or internists that have patients in the local hospital. That’s not the case here. (here's the weird part...they had a wall clock in the waiting room! Have you ever seen that before?)

And then I was reading an article about ‘secret shoppers’ for the medical profession. It seems that there are people who are hired to visit doctors, dentists, hospitals and emergency rooms and pose as patients; even have minor procedures done. The resulting reports can sometimes get an angry response from a doctor. OK! We need more of that.

To cap it off, we went to Lowe’s and the service was pitiful. As usual. And that is when I had another brainstorm. Develop a website that would allow consumers to critique everything. Hardware stores to surgeons. Sure, you can go to Lowe’s website and after 30 minutes of hunting, you might find the complaint department; maybe. But if there were one website that would consolidate all the gripes in the nation, then Lowe’s would be looking there. Imagine a pull down menu and various scroll bars that would let you narrow down the focus of your complaint. State, city, type of business, business name, etc. Text boxes to input businesses that aren’t already in the database. More text boxes to allow you to vent your frustration in an orderly manner. No profanity allowed. And then the complaint would be shielded from viewing by other in-putters. We wouldn’t want copy cat complaints. After 5 complaints or 2 weeks, whichever comes first, the offending party would be notified that complaints were available for their viewing on-line. No more secret shoppers, retailers and other service providers will have the info direct from the ones who matter, their own customers. Customer Complaint Clearinghouse. CCC. Imagine yourself as CEO of Lowe’s; wouldn’t you like to browse through your customers complaints without having them filtered by your staff? OK, if you use my idea, it’s the usual 10% of the net profits for me.