Complaint Strategies and Impoliteness on T-Mobile’s Instagram Account

This research aims to analyze the complaint strategies and impoliteness used by customers on the T-Mobile’s Instagram account. The telecommunications company, which has the Instagram account with the username of @tmobile, had many complaints from its customers. Some of the complaints used by the customers contain impolite language. This research aims to answer the two research problems: (1) what types of complaint strategies are used by customers on the T-Mobile’s Instagram account based on Trosborg's complaint strategies?, and (2) how are the impoliteness found in the complaint strategies used by T-Mobile’s customers? This research uses a qualitative descriptive approach to investigate the phenomenon of customer complaints and the use of complaint strategies contained in the comments column of the T-Mobile Instagram account. Data was collected from the comments column containing customer complaints to analyze customer complaint strategies and impoliteness towards @tmobile. The researcher then discussed and concluded by focusing on customer’s impolite complaints. This research reveals the eight types of complaint strategies; hints, annoyance, ill consequences, indirect accusation, direct accusation, modified blame, explicit condemnation of the accused’s action and explicit condemnation of the accused as a person. Most of the customer used direct accusations against T- Mobile because of the many problems they experienced when using T-Mobile’s services and accused them of being irresponsible. Apart from that, many customer comments directed at T-Mobile are impolite. The negative impoliteness strategy is the most frequently used of impolite behaviour. Customers' impolite comments about T-Mobile always offend, scare, and vilify T-Mobile directly. The purpose of complaints and impolite language used by T-Mobile’s customers is to express their displeasure or anger regarding the circumstances or quality of service they are receiving from T-Mobile. So, it is only fitting that most T-Mobile customers who complain use less polite language because they do not meet directly with the party concerned, only via social media. They are free to express their disappointment or annoyance through comments on the T-Mobile Instagram account.