Content Guidelines

Guide to contributing to Customer Underground

Goals for Content
Submissions
Registration
What to write about
A few no-nos
Editorial processes
Complaints & Copyright holders' inquiries
Further info

1. Goals for content

We have two main goals for content on Customer Underground:

We want as much of the content as possible to be from users.
We want to create an open and constructive environment where users can talk about all aspects of customer service in Australia.

If you’re anything like us, the very thought of being put on hold one more time, shunted from department to department, getting one more form letter that doesn’t really address your problem, makes you want to scream.

Customer Underground is intended to be the opposite of that – the best place online where Australian customers can speak their minds, exchange views robustly but respectfully, actually be listened to and hopefully even start to change how more businesses behave towards their customers. For that, we need your help…

2. Submissions

There are three main ways you can contribute to the site:

Review a business – rate out of five, and write an accompanying review, of any business with a physical address or online presence. Our focus is on Australian businesses but overseas businesses are fine, too, if they provide a service in or to Australia (eg. they ship a product here). If the business isn’t already on the site, you can create a listing for it.

Write a story – this is a longer piece (of whatever length you think you need to tell your story) about a customer service experience you’ve had, good or bad. You can accompany it with supporting stuff, for example, photos you took, or a link to a site or clip. (See our Terms and Conditions for more details on what media you can and can’t post on the site).

Comment on an existing story – here you can post your thoughts on a story that’s already on the site. If you have more to say on the topic than you realised, consider submitting your own story.

3. Do I Need to Be Registered to Contribute?

Yes and No.

You do need to be registered as a user on the site in order to:

review a business;
submit a story.

That is mostly so we can try to ensure people from a business (or a rival of the business) aren’t posting about the business under false details. It’s also so we can get in touch with you if we want to delve deeper into something you’ve written about, or if the business you’ve written about wanted to get in touch with you to try to sort out your experience or get more feedback (don’t worry: we’ll never given anyone your details in that situation without your approval – see our Privacy Policy for more details).

You don't have to be registered to comment on a story, but we recommend you do. We do require you to tell us your name and email address if you haven’t registered. If someone complains about your comment, we will normally take it down if we need more details from you about it but cannot reach you: see ‘Complaints...’ below.

4. What to write about

You can write about anything to do with customer service that you want: particular businesses you’ve had a positive or negative experience with (airlines, telecommunications providers, taxis, restaurants, banks, anyone else); particular policies at particular businesses; types of behaviour by businesses generally that you do or don’t like; it’s all up for grabs.

Feel free to write as much or little as you like: anything from a simple comment on an existing story, to your own review of a business, through to a story for our Blog on an experience you've had.

Feel free also to liven your story up with supporting stuff: photos you took, a link to a business’ website, a news story you saw on the issue, a clip you found online, a scan of a document you received. (Again, see our Terms and Conditions section for more details on what you can and can’t link to the site).

As you’ll see from some of the stories posted in our Blog, some are funny and some are serious. Feel free to write in whatever tone you think is right for the story you want to tell. The whole site isn’t a pisstake, but it’s also not ABC News.

The most important thing, always, is to be as informative and constructive as possible. Without putting anybody to sleep, include as many specifics as you can. What airline was it, for example? When? What specifically did someone say to you? (and so on).

If you’re just furious about an experience and think how you were treated speaks for itself, that’s fine. But often it will occur to you how you could have been treated better, and you should include that in your contributions too. Remember, this is not just about getting things off your chest, but trying to get more businesses to see things from customers’ point of view and changing their behaviour.

And of course, you should give as much detail when you’re writing about good experiences you had. Think a business’ customer service rocks? Tell people why, so that other people on the site will give them a try, and so other businesses can learn from what that company might be doing right.

5. A few no nos

Because we're after an open, constructive environment on the site, we have a few ‘No Nos’ for contributions, and none of them will surprise you:

It’s not ok to use swear words in your contributions (including disguised or abbreviated swear words), to threaten people or businesses, use racist or other bigoted language, defame people (without justification), or encourage other people to do things that are criminal or otherwise contrary to the law.
Don’t waste your time or anyone else’s talking about stuff other than issues about the customer experience: no spam (e.g. links to irrelevant stuff); no unfounded suggestions that someone else talking about a customer service experience did something wrong or somehow deserved any shoddy treatment they got; no comments trying to diminish the importance of what someone is talking about (e.g. no ‘in a world where there’s war and famine, does it really matter that [Name of Airline] lost your luggage’?); no comments complaining about how offending posts of yours have been removed from the site.
Try to be as honest and accurate as possible – obviously, never make up a customer experience (bad or good), and don’t invent facts to try to make it seem worse or better than it was.
And of course, no posting under fake details to talk positively about a business you’re associated with; or to trash a business with whom you’re in competition. (Other than being prevented from reviewing their own business, it’s fine for businesses to post on the site, as long as they disclose who they are to other users where there is a potential conflict of interest. If you have something to say about a business you used to work with, again, you should disclose that in your post so other users know. Special details on what business owners can and can't do on the site, and what disclosure they and other people associated with a business need to make, appear in the 'I'm a business owner; what can I do on the site?' section of our FAQ, and in the 'Unauthorised Uses' section of our Terms & Conditions.)

All those ‘No Nos’ are covered in more detail in our Terms and Conditions. When you register on the site, you’ll be asked to agree to those Terms and Conditions. You’ll be reminded of the need to stick to them each time you post something.

In short, ‘play the ball, not the man’; tell the truth about what happened and who you are; try to keep a cool head; be respectful of others, and we’ll all get along fine.

6. Editorial processes

Reviews

Reviews aren’t edited by us before being posted. But we will remove reviews that we think (or that other users report, and we agree) violate one of our ‘No Nos’ or Terms and Conditions.

Comments on stories

Comments on stories aren’t edited before being posted. But we will remove comments that we think (or that other users report, and we agree) violate one of our ‘No Nos’ or Terms and Conditions.

Stories

New stories are reviewed by our team, according to our content policies and Terms and Conditions, before being posted. They may be edited by us for length and clarity, or if they breach one of our ‘No Nos’ or Terms and Conditions and the problem can easily be fixed without impacting the story (eg. simply removing a swear word or potentially defamatory reference). Generally, new stories that are ok will be posted within 24-48 hours of being submitted. New stories will always appear on our Blog page. Stories we think are going to be interesting or entertaining to many of our users may also make it onto our homepage.

Submitted stories that we think violate one of our ‘No Nos’ or Terms and Conditions (and which we can’t fix with a simple edit) will be sent back to the author, generally within 24-48 hours of submission, pointing out the problem(s) with the story and inviting the author to fix and re-submit. If the re-submitted story fixes the problem, we will happily post it. If the re-submission does not fix the problem, we won’t.

A story may sometimes end up being removed after posting, if someone complains about it and we think the complaint is justified. (See ‘Complaints...’ immediately below).

7. Complaints & copyright holders' inquiries

Details about how we handle complaints from users and businesses appear in our FAQ section.

But in essence, anyone (a user or a business) with a concern about a review, story or comment posted on the site can notify us via our contact form.

Generally, within 2 days of receiving a complaint about any review, story or comment, we will be in contact with the person making the complaint to let them know their complaint has been received.

We will then investigate the complaint and, generally within a week, either:

take the review, story or comment down if we think the complaint is justified; or
decide to leave it up if we think the complaint is not justified.

We will then be in contact again to advise the person who made the complaint of our decision and why we have made it.

Whether or not we take a review / story / comment down or leave it up, the person complaining (including businesses) will always have the opportunity to post their own review (except in the case of a business owner), or their own comment on the existing story or their own new story, responding to the review / story / comment they have complained about. (We are also working on a formal ‘Reply by Business’ function).

In investigating a complaint, we may need to be in contact with the author. If we need more details to verify a review, story or comment and cannot reach the author, we will normally simply take the post down. (A good reason why, even when posting a comment, you should always have joined and be logged in).

Finally, the site reserves the right temporarily or permanently to ban a user if their comments are persistently complained about and we think the complaints are justified. See our Terms and Conditions section for more detail.

Copyright holders' inquiries - images, video and other media

Copyright holders and other rights holders concerned about our use of an image, video or other media on the site in which they claim an ownership right should contact us. Please note, reasonable efforts are made to identify the copyright holders in such images, video, other media before they are posted, and to acknowledge them on the site when they are posted. Where with reasonable diligence we have been unable to identify the copyright holder, the source we have taken the image, video or other media from is given instead. See our Terms and Conditions section for more detail.

8. Further Info

Something still not clear? Just contact us and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks for stopping by, and get contributing! Customers unite!