Webware

Whether you want to target politicians, your employers, or companies that have done you wrong, there are a variety of sites across the Web that will help you voice your complaints. But beware that not all of them will actually solve those problems.

Lodge your complaints

Anonymous Employee Those having trouble at the office should try out Anonymous Employee. The service allows you to create a user name and password without requiring an e-mail address. After that, you can input the name of your employer, the person you want to contact, and the issue you want to make them aware of. Anonymous Employee automatically sends the message to the recipient without identifying you.

Unfortunately, Anonymous Employee was buggy and at times, it took too long to send a message. That said, I was impressed by the number of options it offered, including complaints about age discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Once it fixes those bugs, Anonymous Employee will be an even more compelling service.

Anonymous Employee keeps you private when you make issues public.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Better Business Bureau The Better Business Bureau site is one of the best places to lodge complaints. Right from the home page, you can access the organization's complaint tool, which allows you to take issue with your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, a product or service outside of those two categories, or a charity. After inputting information about yourself, you can describe your issue on the site. It's then filed with the Better Business Bureau and investigated.

The Better Business Bureau wants to know the nature of your complaint.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

CongressMerge If you're unhappy with what's going on in your state, CongressMerge can help you out. The site provides you with a search field to find all of your elected representatives. Once you find the politician you want to contact, it gives you a listing of all their phone numbers, a map to their office, and even their fax number so you can be sure to get in touch with them. You can also check out your elected representatives' voting records on the site. It's a great way to find all the means of communication you need to have your voice heard in the political process.

CongressMerge helps you contact your representative.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

Yahoo and Google aren't the only ones whose Web site changes incur the wrath of users who'd rather things stay the way they were.

Microsoft is discontinuing an option to use Hotmail's older "classic" interface, merging it with a newer "full" design into a hybrid the company says is faster to use than both the predecessors. "With our new combined platform, we offer great performance in all markets by putting the best features from both versions in one well-designed platform. Because of these performance improvements it is no longer necessary to offer the classic version," the company said in a statement.

Matt Penttila was among those who was unhappy with the change when he lost his old Hotmail interface earlier this week. (More complaints are lodged at My Digital Life site.)

Hotmail users "can't differentiate between tabs and backgrounds because the background is the same color as the tabs, can't change the size of the columns to the left, can't read anything below 10 folders without scrolling down," Penttila said of the newer design. In addition, "read windows don't allow for scrolling side to side, just up and down, anything with graphics is automatically flagged as safe or unsafe and show gray boxes when the day before they were fine and showed with no problem," he said.

What peeved him most, though, was that he said Microsoft foisted the change on him. "They just did it without any warning or consent," he said.

Microsoft said there was indeed warning. "Hotmail customers were notified of these changes beginning in early September," the company said, before the changes started going live on September 22. "The team sent out e-mails and posted ads in advance, which highlighted the upcoming changes to the Windows Live Hotmail."

Also, Microsoft described the Hotmail overhaul rationale in an October blog post by Dick Craddock, Hotmail's group program manager.

It's hard to change heavily used sites. A 2001 Hotmail revamp triggered complaints, then a 2006 Hotmail redesign caused enough problems that Microsoft reverted to classic mode by default.

Yahoo and Google have struggled with objections to redesigns of the Yahoo front page, the Flickr home page, and the iGoogle customizable start page.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has caught on to the fact that a sizeable handful of his 100-million-plus users say they aren't too thrilled with the site's new redesign. But he won't change anything, as Facebook occasionally has in the face of user revolt.

A post on the company blog, authored by Zuckerberg, wrote that the site's new focus--which emphasizes the sharing of media and information--is "an important step for us."

"In the last four years, we've built new products that help people share more, such as photos, videos, groups, events, wall posts, status updates and so on," the post read. "As people share more, sometimes we need to change the site to accommodate how much information people are posting."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Some Facebook users freaked out over its News Feed in 2006, and its Beacon advertising program last year. But the concerns voiced there dealt with privacy, not user interface. That was something that could've resulted in much more PR damage than a design that a slim percentage of users vehemently dislike (and which most, it seems, don't really care much about).

"Many people disliked News Feed at first because it changed their home page and how they shared information," Zuckerberg's post read. ("How they share information" is putting it lightly.) "Now it's one of the most important parts of Facebook. We think the new design can have the same effect." He added the company had gone through months of a "feedback" stage and that the final product was shaped largely in part by users' input.

In response to some Facebook users who asked if they could have the option to use the old design instead of the new one, Zuckerberg said it wasn't possible for technical reasons. "It's tempting to say that we should just support both designs, but this isn't as simple as it sounds," he wrote. "Supporting two versions is a huge amount of work for our small team, and it would mean that going forward we would have to build everything twice. If we did that then neither version would get our full attention."

Facebook's team isn't exactly tiny--they have said they hope to hit 800 employees by the end of 2008--but running two Web sites that run the same property differently probably is a pain in the neck. Kind of analogous to Microsoft's dealing with those holdouts who are still using Windows 98.

And as for the members who have banded together to form Facebook groups protesting the new design (a bit meta, yes), Zuckerberg claims he's not offended. "We appreciate the thousands of you who have written in to give us feedback," the post read. "Even if you're joining a group to express things you don't like about the new design, you're giving us important feedback and you're sharing your voice, which is what Facebook is all about."

Cold calls from telemarketers and other companies that ignore the do-not-call list are one of the banes of modern day civilization.

A simple Google search for a mystery number you've received usually lets you know who's on the other end before you have to pick it up. The problem is that cell phones don't have the same quality of caller ID landlines get (numbers not names); so that call you're getting could be something important like an overdue library book, or a pushy desk jockey trying to sell you a heavily discounted hafnium-forged non-stick pan set.

In most cases the telemarketers don't leave messages and will simply call you back, resulting in an endless cycle of you not knowing who's calling and having to call back to find out--something you're unlikely to do. To avoid this, there's Caller Complaints, a crowd-sourced index of the phone numbers of law breaking companies that have called folks on the do-not-call list. Users come together to list these numbers, what was being pitched--and the frequency of the calls. If you find someone else has already listed the number and shared their negative experience, you can pile on and leave your experience, which votes it up.

The most popular (or in this case unpopular) companies rise to the top and are tracked on leaderboards. Users can also browse by area code and what type of call it was, from political phone spam to prank calls and debt collectors. The idea is that there will be enough resources to help you get to the bottom of who's calling to either leave a complaint with your carrier or simply blacklist the number from calling again.

So far the site has amassed nearly 200,000 number searches from curious call recipients. If you're adding a number to the database you also have the option to do a little quick research on ReversePhoneDetective, which will tell you where the call originated from and give you the option to pay for a full report.

Related:
Reverse Mobile helps track down mystery callers
SlyDial lets you call straight to voice mail

You can browse bad numbers by how many folks have complained about it, which area code it's from, or how often it's searched for.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Complaining about an injustice is rarely enough to effect change. But when dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people kvetch in an organized and forceful manner, things can happen. Boycotts change companies. Unions end up controlling the direction of industries. Protests overthrow governments.

The Point is a new site to help instigators collect the wishes of the masses and to get participants to pledge to take action when a "tipping point" of participation is reached.

Fill in the blanks to start your own boycott!

For example, if you are upset that Southwest Airlines no longer lets families with small children board first, you can join the pledge to boycott Southwest once 2,000 other people also sign up. As soon as the desired number of people sign on to the campaign, the pledge is activated. But if they don't, you're not left twisting in the wind executing a meaningless protest.

The Point can also work with financial action: You can join a pledge to participate in an event if enough other people sign on, as well. If the pledge goals are met, your credit card (that you're previously submitted) is debited. If not, you're not charged.

CEO Andrew Mason's pitch to me was laced with modern political rhetoric. He says The Point "enables participatory democracy," and that "every shared problem has a tipping point."

Now this is a movement I can support.

What I like about it is that it can make users into small-scale union organizers (or, for that matter, strike busters): There's nothing to say that the service couldn't be used to organize a work stoppage or similar activity. But if you're afraid of participating, The Point campaigns can be set up with conditional anonymity. In other words, people can pledge their support of a campaign and remain anonymous up until the point that the campaign reaches it pledge goals. The means you don't have to stick your neck out alone, but when you know your movement has a head of steam, you can be sure your name will be part of it.

The challenge, for The Point or any other consensus-building service, is getting users onboard. You may be able to scare up a dozen people who don't like the color of the Cheerios box, but to take on a corporation or a government you're going to need to reach beyond your friends and family. So Mason sees The Point not so much as a destination, but rather a service that other activist sites can use as a back-end for campaign management. Complaints.com, for example, could aggregate customer dissatisfaction using The Point. Likewise any political site.

Integration into social networks is also coming, and is greatly needed.

The site officially launches next week but is in open alpha right now. It's a little buggy at this point but well worth checking out.

Other collective action sites include Fundable, Chipin, Eventful, HomeSlyce, and Causes on Facebook.