The Art of Complaining. Phil Edmonston

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      Success Story

      Georges Zeliotis was a seventy-three-year old Quebec retiree who needed several hip operations and was placed on a hospital waiting list for treatment. After a year-long wait Zeliotis asked if he could pay to have hip surgery through a private health care facility and if he could buy private health care insurance. The Quebec government answered with a resounding non!

      Zeliotis found Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, a Quebec physician who provided medical services to many of his patients at their homes. For several years, Chaoulli had been unsuccessful in getting the Quebec government to cover the costs of the home medical treatments he provided and to grant him the right to establish a private, autonomous hospital.

      Patient and doctor teamed up and fought the Quebec government’s refusal all the way to the Supreme Court after having their case tossed out by two lower courts. In June 2005, in a four-to-three decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and against the Quebec Charter of Rights, writing, “Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

      The successful lawsuit allows patients to be treated privately in Quebec and has opened the door to private clinics throughout Canada. Waiting lists remain but provincial healthcare facilities have to keep the waits reasonably short or pay for treatment elsewhere. Patients seeking payment for private treatment simply have to show that a long wait would unjustly deprive them of their section 7 rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects “the right to life, liberty and security of the person.”

      Yep, complaining works, anywhere — if it’s done the right way.

      We ALL Win: The Social Benefits of Complaining

      When something goes wrong, we all wonder if we really should complain. After all, we don’t want to be embarrassed or proven wrong in public. Yet, somewhere deep in our soul we know that a defective product or poor service shouldn’t go unheralded. We know silence is complicity, and a failure to act is cowardice. So we complain, and the world is the better for it — or, at least we feel better — for a short while, probably.

      According to Professor Bryan Dwyer (insertmarketinghere.com/tag/types-of-complainers), complainers can be grouped into four categories:

       Passives are the least likely to complain to either the organization or to other consumers through word of mouth; they either doubt the effectiveness of complaining, or it goes against personal values and norms.

       Voicers are likely to complain to the organization but not to other consumers; they believe complaining is likely to resolve the problem.

       Irates are more likely to complain to other consumers than to the organization; unlikely to give the provider a second chance, they switch providers and actively spread negative word-of-mouth.

       Activists are the most likely to complain to the organization and to other consumers; they believe all forms of complaining have positive results.

      Airing a grievance can have far-reaching consequences. In the eighteenth century, citizens’ complaints over unfair taxation that were ignored by England were a big part of what led to the American Revolution and the birth of the United States.

      Sometimes, the failure of government to act upon citizens’ complaints can have far-reaching, unforeseen consequences that may lead to its overthrow by ballot and almost tear a country apart.

      Success Story

      Former prime minister Brian Mulroney became Canada’s equivalent of King George III in 1992 by turning a deaf ear to protests over his proposals to change the Canadian constitution. His inability to hear the collective grumble of the electorate sank the Charlottetown Accord in a national referendum that year. During the run-up to the vote, Prime Minister Mulroney further alienated the electorate by calling opponents of the accord “enemies of Canada.” Voters complained that they were being bullied by the “political class” and rejected the accord by 54.4 percent.

      A majority of voters in seven of the ten provinces (including Quebec) voted against the accord, with only Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and the Northwest Territories voting in favour. Surprisingly, 62 percent of Aboriginals on reserves voted against the Accord as well, despite its proposals for Aboriginal self-government.

      Meanwhile, Stephen Harper, a policy wonk for the conservative Reform Party, framed the referendum as the ordinary people of Canada against political “elites.” In the subsequent federal election, Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party won only two seats. The PCs were ultimately taken over by the Reform Party, and Harper is now in his third term as Conservative prime minister. In effect, a dissatisfied citizenry staged a bloodless coup — Canadian-style.

      A positive consequence of the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord was the trend away from formal constitutional reform and the use of intergovernmental agreements and government legislation, like recognizing “the Québécois” as a “nation within Canada,” giving Quebec veto power over future constitutional amendments, and transferring labour-market training to all provinces.

      Since 1992, the phrase constitutional reform has become toxic in most political circles — the enduring legacy of Mr. Mulroney’s bellicosity and Canada’s refusal to buy a tainted product. In effect, Canadian voters did the right thing: they grumbled, and they voted.

      Results of the Referendum on the Charlottetown Accord

JURISDICTION	VOTED YES	% YES	VOTED NO	% NO
Newfoundland	133,193	62.9	77,881	36.5
Prince Edward Island	48,687	73.6	17,124	25.9
Nova Scotia	218,618	48.5	230,182	51.1
New Brunswick	234,010	61.3	145,096	38.0
Quebec	1,710,117	42.4	2,232,280	55.4
Ontario	2,410,119	49.8	2,397,665	49.6
Manitoba	198,230	37.8	322,971	61.6
Saskatchewan	203,361	44.5	252,459	55.2
Alberta	483,275	39.7	731,975	60.1
British Columbia	525,188	31.7	1,126,761	68.0
Yukon	5,354	43.4	6,922	56.1
Northwest Territories	14,750	60.6	9,416	38.7
Total Canada	6,185,902	44.6	7,550,732	54.4

      In the following chapters, I will help you to understand your rights as a consumer and show you winning strategies for getting a refund, respect — and maybe even revenge.

      Chapter Two

      YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

      For ordinary causes our contentious system has great merit as a means of getting at the truth. But it is a denial of justice in small causes to drive litigants to employ lawyers, and it is a shame to drive them to legal aid societies to get as a charity what the state should give as a right.

      — Roscoe Pound, “The Administration of Justice in the Modern City,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 26 (1913), pp. 302–08

      A Consumer Bill of Rights

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