Yes, that happens to be KARMA’s tagline.  But it also defines Word of Mouth — and much like KARMA, it can be both positive and negative.

As a business, individual or company, you want word of mouth to be positive, but the reality is through new social media platforms and exchanges, consumers have more ways to amplify their experiences– the good, the bad and the ugly.

Take, for example, my recent restaurant going experiences over the weekend.  Not one, but two restaurants (that shall remain nameless for the time being) slipped in extra entrees on our bill, hoping we would not check.  And we almost didn’t.

In the first instance, since we were taking a family member out for their 65th birthday, we didn’t want to cause a scene and just ate it.  Annoying.

In the second and far more annoying instance, a restaurant, where my husband and I are considered “regulars”, slipped in an extra entree, the entree we usually order when we’re there but didn’t this time.  Was this a random error?  No, they figured since we usually get the same thing every time, they’d try to sneak it in.  When we called the waitress over, body language had “oops we’ve been caught” written all over it.  We won’t be going there again.

My point with the above, is as an irritated, frustrated, and somewhat direct consumer, my first inclination was to go wherever possible online to warn people not to go to these two restaurants.  My Facebook and Twitter updates mentioned this annoyance, and look, here I am blogging about it.  I’ve decided to not name the restaurants, but if I truly wanted to cause some damage and give these two places the consumer F%&* YOU, I’d be a little more specific.

Consumers like tell others how much they like or dislike products, services and experiences. eMarketer reports that 65 million adults in the U.S. are talking about products and services and 27 million of them are doing it online via forums, blogs, consumer review sites, social media sites etc. That trend is only going to increase.

Sure, businesses should try to do things right in the first place to garner positive reviews, but they shouldn’t be afraid of the bad ones.  It’s possible many of them can turn this around to be a positive by connecting with their target audience, hearing feedback, and understanding their audience’s perception.

So I’m not sure if Pace in Laurel Canyon or Taste on Melrose will do anything about my experiences to make it better, but if they were smart, they’d not only keep in mind that consumers like to blab about shifty practices, but they should pay attention to what’s being said.

Oops! I slipped the names of the restaurants.  Kind of like how they slipped in those extra entrees.