I want chat rooms, consumer rights info &... Review on General Thoughts About MouthShut

Like many of us, I came across this site while searching for a particular review on the net. Google very promptly threw Mouthshut links at me, which I hungrily lapped up and it would be safe to say that they more than satisfied my hunger at that time. Yet, it is basic human nature I suppose, to keep wanting more and more, never being satisfied, that on fulfillment of a need a new higher one materializes. At that time, I never could have imagined being so addicted to Mouthshut as I am today. Visiting it and RRC’ing (Reading, Rating and Commenting for the newbie’s) is now an essential part of my daily online ritual which I follow religiously.

So, what is it that endears so many of us to this unique online community? I think it is that basic tenet of connecting directly to a human and his opinion. Here the mental clutter of advertising, prejudices and brands are swept away by a wave of unbiased views. No one is afraid to call a spade, a spade and that’s why while the whole country is going gaga over the success of ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’, MS’ians are thrashing it left, right and center. Or, while ICICI continues its seduction campaign in the media, MS’ians refuse to buy into their hogwash. I see it as socialism at work (long live Che Guevara?), what do you see it as? (Do let me know in the comments section).

Another reason for me honestly speaking is that I am emotionally attached to Mouthshut. If it is alright to say that one can fall in love with a website, then you can definitely say that for me. While for me it was love at first sight, Mouthshut, typically like a girl, took a bit of time to acknowledge my overtures. She couldn’t resist my charm for long though, within a month of my joining the rank and file of her admirers, she rewarded my affections by choosing me as a winner in the ‘just chill out’ contest (Okay, so what if there were other winners too, even Draupadi had 5 husbands!). So here I was feeling like an uncrowned emperor holding my prize (an audio tape of Dev Anand hits and a VCD of ‘The Bridge on the river kwai’, cool no?) and gloating over it on the phone to all my friends. I still go to the contests page where they have the past winners listing, see my name and clap my hands in glee! Then like an icing on the cake, I got a New Year greeting card from Mouthshut and as much as my mind would have me disbelieve, it was really hand-signed by Faisal. A father giving his approval to a relationship?

Well, after my flattering discourse on the travails of love, you would be led to believe that I must be obsessed with Mouthshut, but jokes notwithstanding I don’t. At least not yet. There are still areas where there is scope of improvement and some of these points I would like to share with you:

1. A Chat Room: This is one feature whose lack of availability has been pricking me ever since I realized Mouthshut’s potential as a powerful medium of communication. With its concept of direct contact between readers and writers, there is an increasing feeling of kinship between members of similar tastes, experiences or anything else they might find in common. While Mouthshut somewhat realizes this, in its providing the ‘Trust circle’ model or letting members email each other, I simply fail to understand what’s stopping the management from providing a dedicated chat room for MS members. A chat room where I can log on, see which else member is logged on, talk about his/her reviews and generally communicate real-time. As far as I see, there are no high financial or administrative costs involved that should stop the management from implementing such a feature for the benefit of its loyal members. To weed out the non-serious and undesired elements who crop up in chat rooms, MS could implement a filtering policy that, only members with 5 posted reviews can log on into the chat room. Star-writers could be assigned the role of moderators (with their permission) and it would be a perfect world we live in.

2. Consumer Rights Information: Mouthshut with its slogan ‘Consumer reviews helping you decide’, assumes a big responsibility in facilitating and encouraging spread of knowledge about consumer rights and the means of safeguarding them. While right now Mouthshut primarily caters to people who are going to buy a service/product and want an opinion on it, there is no incentive to those who have already bought, experienced dissatisfaction and want to do something about it. Though all the members have been very magnanimous in relating their miseries and experiences with a bad product/service just so that other people should benefit from their information, MS should give them a better incentive to do so. Why not have a link to a page that provides information on the location of consumer courts, laws protecting consumer rights, the availability of lawyers, information on procedures for filing redressal complaints and help on writing financial claim letters. As all countries would have different laws, MS could start out with one country and gradually cover all those which its members hail from. However if MS wants to protect its intellectual capital, they can provide access to all this information only after a person has clocked one review. If nothing else, atleast MS could provide us with stories where citizens have taken on big corporations and come out trumps in the court of law (a la Erin Brockovich), that would certainly prove inspiring. I can assure you there is no dearth of such stories and such a feature would only increase Mouthshut’s brand equity while fulfilling its social commitment as a company.

3. Increased flexibility in rating system: Mostly I have been satisfied with the 4 ratings option available but there are occasions when I find myself wondering whether to give ‘useful’ or ‘somewhat useful’ as there is always a review which follows a middle path (duke’s soda would say ‘yeh to beech ka hai’) and while ‘useful’ would be a little patronizing, ‘somewhat useful’ would be a bit harsh. Thus, Mouthshut should create a new rating between the two or it can adopt the number rating system from 1-5 which is more practical and majority of the sites with a feature that requires rating use it. What to do is the management’s discretion but the bottom line is that the rating system does need an overhaul, it needs to be streamlined and it needs to be more flexible.

4. Text windows:To be honest, the window where we type/paste our reviews sucks. I lose most of the tabs and like the days of yore, I have to insert HTML tags manually. MS should have a toolbar at the top, where we can underline, convert to bold, italicize and space our review properly. Also, while sending an email to a fellow member, if I click outside the text window before clicking on send, the whole text disappears, which to me is very frustrating. This and other aspects of user-friendliness should be addressed by MS as soon as possible.

Now, if enough of us call up Faisal on his Dial-a-CEO day, we might get a ball rolling but a consensus has to built on these kinds of issues. Please comment if you identify with any of my thoughts or would you rather brand my words as blasphemy, tie me on a stake and set me on fire? I stand trial in the comments section, do give your verdict!