Consumers are mad as hell and aren't gonna take it anymore

Last year, two-thirds of American consumers who had a problem with a product or service reported feeling rage about it. Scott Bretzman, CEO of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting, runs the survey behind that number. He also admits to being an "embarrassingly rageful" consumer himself, currently locked in a month-long dispute with a tuxedo rental company over a billing error. "Each answer I get is more confusing than the last one I got," he says. A separate survey from the University of Michigan, released the same week, confirms the trend: customer complaints have hit record highs. The American consumer is not just annoyed—they are mad.

Why complaints are at an all-time high

Forrest Morgeson, research director emeritus for the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index, has tracked consumer happiness for over three decades across 45 industries. His most recent report shows that customer satisfaction has continued a two-year slide, and complaints—defined as customers actually contacting a company to report a problem—have reached levels never seen before. "To see those at record highs is troubling," he says. But the reasons are more structural than personal. Scott Bretzman points out that 77% of consumers reported a problem in the past year—more than double the rate from 50 years ago. He does not believe products are universally worse or that people ar