Mad as hell? YouTube your consumer complaint rant

When a product disappoints you, do you reach for the phone, or even worse, write a freakin' letter? You're living in the future, dude, so act like it! If a product sucks, YouTube your rant about it.

YouTube and similar sites such as AOL Video are full of video complaints about product failure, usually extended plaintive ramblings about every nuance of shortcoming. Who, you might ask, watches this stuff? Is anything less interesting than a young lady's travails with a hair weave product? Actually, some of them are damn entertaining, as the video below will attest.

And the results might surprise you. Corporations, at least the savvy ones, keep an eye on viewer-posted video for consumer complaints, for two reasons. First, these most vocal customers can be just as vocal proponents of a brand if turned around by responsive customer service. Second, these complaints can be good business intelligence, an early warning of possible problems.

So the next time you have a consumer complaint for which you can't get a company response, don't just whine to your spouse; video it!