Consumer’s Reader: NAIS Advice to Consumers about Filing Complaints to Traders - Part 1

If you are a user who is dissatisfied with a product or service, be sure to try to negotiate with the trader from whom you baught it. Search on the company’s website for the complaint policy or find out about it from an employee at the customer contact point.

First step: direct contact with the trader

This step is necessary to inform the trader that you are not happy with your deal with him. Complaining on social media and damaging their reputation in public will not solve the problem until you present to them clearly and precisely the reasons for your dissatisfaction and your demands to resolve the situation.

The complaint can be submitted to the trader in several ways and in different communication channels.

Ways and channels for filing complaints

Merchant's own channels

In case of an oral complaint, you can use a voice channel offered by the company - telephone, call center, voice connection via an internet platform, present in a store.

The written form may be a specially designed electronic form or in the form of a chat available on the merchant's website, it may be a paper complaint filed in a store or complaints department, in free text by e-mail, the contact form on the website of the company or in an electronic platform. It can be submitted in its own or external partner channel for the trader, such as the online platform of NAIS- nais.bg.

Not all companies have their own electronic complaint form. Most traders think that it is enough to just have a contact form on their website, e-mail, contact phone number, where the complaint is submitted in free text. In such a case, it is important for the complainant to know that:

• It should state briefly, clearly, but also comprehensively (with dates, product names, numbers, etc.) the problem.
• Attach evidence - invoices, receipts, photos, etc.
• Make demands (this is often overlooked by complainants, but it is also important to improve the effectiveness of negotiations)

If you want to file a complaint against a trader, you can do so on nais.bg, having previously registered in it. For non-Bulgarian citizens the complaint must be submitted in the ODR platform of the European Union.

It is important to know that the path of negotiations gives a chance to find a mutually beneficial solution and preserves the partnership between customer and trader. It is good to try before appealing at court or filing a signal directly to the CPC, after which the relationship between the parties is certainly destroyed.

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