The purpose of complaining is to get sympathy for how badly you are being screwed. Is that the only purpose or are there others?

I spread the word among friends and family to stay away from certain establishments. I think word-of-mouth is very effective. Which brings me to  a question I'm gonna ask. When you look on the internet for reviews how do you know they are true and not paid for puff pieces? Thank you for your reply Ele! :)

I rarely do. The one time I did for a certain Mexican Restaurant here, it was spot on. One of the best I ever ate at. You can't get reviews for chain stores from different areas of town, though. This post was edited by Element 99 at July 6, 2018 6:32 AM MDT

I research all kinds of things and some are scams and some seem to be the real deal and worth trying. But I do worry that I'm being played. You know some years ago it was revealed that many of those glorious reviews of plays or books or movies were written by paid employees. So much for honesty and truth. Whatcha gonna do? Thank you for your reply Ele. A couple of things that Jim  was interested in were scams. He is very innocent and naive and tends to believe what he sees on TV or reads about in magazines. I do my dutiful duty of investigating. When I input a name and what comes up first are words like "scam, fraud,con" I read every word. Now I have researched things that had nothing negative at all. There is a site called "Home Advisor". When you need repairs done you tell the site what you need and it provides several names of suppliers of whatever it is. We've used it a few times and the folks who show up are HONEST and very good. We had a part missing on our dryer. It would have cost $66 to replace it. He said if we weren't interested in what it looked like we could just stick our finger into that hole and press down on the button and the dryer would work! Guess what we did? Then there was another guy who showed up and evaluated what we thought might be dangerous mold. He spent about ten minutes checking it out and said it wasn't. NO CHARGE! I could not believe it! I don't know if it is just local or nationwide. But I would recommend it based on our experience with it. Thank you for your reply Ele!  :) This post was edited by RosieG at July 6, 2018 6:37 AM MDT

Sometimes speaking up results in making things better. Sometimes it just makes things worse. It's a crapshoot! Thank you for your reply WQ and Happy Saturday to you! :)

If you're lucky speaking up will make things better.  That is always that hope. Whether it materializes or not I think requires some luck. Thank you for your reply and Happy Saturday.