Have you tried to provide feedback to a company online?

[Ms. Toad]

9. My biggest success was when I found an independent review site and published a 1 star review.

Someone used my phone number to sign up for job recruiting leads at a company with a pretty good reputation.

I started getting about a dozen texts a day with leads for jobs. I tried to unenroll according to the directions in the text to no avail.

Next I called the company - who couldn't find my enrollment. After some frustrating conversation, I learned that they have franchises (indistinguishable but for the name) over which they claim to have no control, despite the fact that the only contact information available in the texts I was receiving point directly to the corporate entity. I pointed out that the licensing agreement must include some means of control - to ensure that the franchises didn't damage their reputation. They insisted there was nothing they could do.

So I found a review site with lots of ratings, an overall score for the company between 4 and 5, and responses by the company to negative reviews. I blasted them with a 1 star review and promised to return and change the rating if they resolved the problem. It was resolved within 24 hours - after a couple of weeks of frustration trying to go through official channels. As I promised, I returned and updated the recommendation. Not a 5 star rating, but I did note how quickly they had responded and corrected the problem in response to the initial rating I had provided.