Complaint & Dispute Record
For anyone in a long argument with a company — a landlord, an insurer, a builder, a utility, a bank, a phone provider. Disputes are settled by the side with the better record, and almost nobody keeps one; they rely on memory and a scatter of emails in three inboxes. One row per contact: the date, the organisation, whether you called them or they called you, the channel, what was said and what was agreed, any date they gave for something happening, what you did next, whether it went up a level and to whom, where the evidence is filed, and the status now. Two of those columns are the ones people skip and the two that carry the weight — the reference number and the name of the person. "Somebody told me on the phone it was fine" is worth nothing to anybody; "your Mr Patel, reference 4471, on the 3rd, who said the charge would be removed within the week" is worth a great deal, and it costs ten seconds to ask for both at the end of a call. Write the row before you put the phone down, while the wording is exact. Be clear about what this is not: it is a record, not advice. It does not tell you where you stand, what any organisation has to do, what any time limit is, or whether you have a case — those depend on your country, your contract and your circumstances, and the only place they come from is someone qualified who has read the file.
Your database
Fields
| Field | Type |
|---|---|
| Date of the contact | date |
| Company / organisation | text |
| Who made contact | select |
| Name of the person you dealt with | text |
| Their role, team or location | text |
| Channel | select |
| Reference / case number they gave | text |
| What was said or promised, in their words | text |
| What was agreed | text |
| Date they said it would happen by | date |
| What I did next | text |
| Escalated? | bool |
| Escalated to (name and level) | text |
| Amount in dispute | number |
| Where the evidence is filed | text |
| Status | select |
| Other notes | text |
Frequently asked
Where is my data stored?
Only on this device, in your browser. Nothing is ever uploaded — a dispute record holds who you argued with and how it went, and a job-hunt log holds where you applied and where you were turned down, and neither belongs on someone else's server. Export to CSV to back it up, to print it, or to move it to another device.
Does it chase anything or work anything out for me?
No. It stores exactly what you type and nothing else. It watches no date, sends no message and no email, contacts nobody on your behalf, rates nothing, and does nothing while the tab is closed. Silence from this tool never means a thing has been handled — it means nobody has looked. Put anything time-sensitive in whatever calendar actually interrupts you, and use this to hold the detail behind it.
What exactly should I write in the "what was said" column?
Their words, not your summary of them. "Says it'll be sorted" is a memory; "said the charge would be credited on the next bill and that no further action was needed from me" is a record, and the difference is everything if the charge appears again. Quote the promise, name who made it, note the reference, and write it the same day — a contemporaneous note carries weight precisely because it was written before anyone knew how the argument would end. If a call was recorded or an email confirmed it, put where that lives in the evidence column so it can be found in one step.