I agree 100% to the concept and ideas behind this, and other similar sites. But the cynic in me does not see the carriers voluntarily co-operating and addressing complaints in a forum driven public enviroment.
Lets just take Graham's complaint as an example: He indicates that American is sending him vouchers for the problem. Lets just say that the vouchers = $200 Now say another traveler, Pete, had the exact same problem and the carrier sends Pete $300 in vouchers. Now American has another complaint because Graham sees that Pete got an extra $100 and wants the same compensation. For this reason alone, carriers will always contract the passenger privately in an attempt to resolve an issue.
As for carriers taking proactive rsponse and responding to complaints posted in this and similar forums, that is just not going to happen. Again, take Graham's complaint. While I have no reason to doubt its content, or any other complaint on this site, there is no way for American to verify it. There is no flight date, flight number, or even the passenger's real name.
Now the carrier could proactivly contact Graham with a personal message through the site, but why would they? Graham already stated that they did not contact him when he contacted them directly so why would they extra steps to contact him through a third party site? Sure you can say "public image" but if you watch the industry closely, you will see that they really don't see how these complaints hurt their overall public image. Especially when "Paul" has the exact same complaint against United and "Stacy" has the same complaint against Delta, ect.
As long as they see their image as better than the competitions, they would rather focus on other things.
As for the response Graham recieved from American, we recieved one complaint this month from a "Graham" against American Airlines. On 7/18, an anlayst encouraged American to respond to the the consumer. Draw your own conclussions.
In my opinion, if you want a response from the carrier and attempted to contact the carrier are falling by the wayside: file a complaint with the DOT here:
http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/escomplaint/es.cfm
I hope that I am wrong and you are right because then I would not have to spend as much time on general complaint issue and would have more time to spend on regulatory matters.