Call Kurtis: How To Get A Big Company to Listen To Your Complaint

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) - Forrest Gardens was tired of explaining his issue over and over again. So instead of writing a letter and making more calls, Gardens looked right into his laptop's camera and hit record.

He says he'd been battling Home Depot for charging him thousands more than he says he was quoted for flooring, and he was done sitting on the phone.

"You end up in a telephone tree from heck," said Gardens.

"I can say one thing to everybody all at the same time," he said.

Gardens emailed the link to anyone and everyone he could find within Home Depot including the CEO, and as the number of video views jumped, he says his phone rang.

"She was like 'Hey, we saw your YouTube video,'" he recalls.

Gardens says right away Home Depot fixed his pricing problem.

Public relations executive Doug Elmets says more people are using video to complain.

"It's a great way to get attention, no question about it," said Elmets

With how fast a video can spread through social media, he says companies need to take these complaints seriously.

"It is instantaneous, it's easy and it's impactful," and "Ultimately it is to Home Depot's benefit to get this to just go away, particularly if a customer is right"

We reached out to Home Depot which told us, "We want all our customers to be satisfied, so we look to provide a fair resolution regardless of how they contact us."

But Gardens says he didn't get results until he made the video.

"That's the only way to communicate for me from here on out," he said.

With social media, you now have more power than ever when fighting consumer problems.

Several companies now have full-time teams keeping an eye on social media for complaints.

Keep in mind, once you post that video, it may be out there for life, with your face on it.

Elmets suggests when making a consumer complaint video have a couple of bullet points prepared, and if there's a visual like something is defective or broken show that. Keep video down to a minute or two and be clear what you want to resolve the situation.

HOME DEPOT STATEMENT

"We want all our customers to be satisfied, so we look to provide a fair resolution regardless of how they contact us."