Very much so, in all the call centers I've worked in there was no "complaints department" we are just told to listen to the customer, relate with their concerns and tell them it will be "reviewed" by another department. In reality, it goes absolutely no where. Even if I 100% agreed with your complaint, I have no place to record it or know who it's supposed to go to to get further up the ladder. Some managers will accept your complaint, put it on their desk, then throw it out. If you been employed long enough the managers wont even accept it, cause honestly I don't think they have anyone to pass it up the chain to that would actually accept it.

Best way to go is social media, companies have "Social Media Experts" that are employed solely for online damage control.

Another way to get something done is by sending a plain snail mail letter addressed to someone high-up at the company in question. You have to figure that out yourself as if you call the call center, the reps are never allowed to give out that information or they are told to tell you a fake address/fake person or the general C/O Complaints Department. Those go to no one at all and directly to the garbage.

Now if you successfully send a written complaint letter to someone high up, everyone knows about it, cause the internal police come to investigate if anyone at the call center gave out that information (It's a huge deal and grounds to be fired).

Another thing, youtube clips, if you are recording and posting on youtube your conversation with a rep, the company has a team to watch for that stuff. Once they find you doing that, you then become a "Flagged Customer" and we prepare while we leave you on hold, get one of the better reps available and have 2-3 other managers listening in on the line guiding the rep through the call step by step.

That's very interesting, thanks for sharing your experience.

Re: youtube clips. I don't do that, but when I call a customer service to complain and ask for a change that I know will not be well received (e.g. cancel cable) I always start the conversation by saying that I am recording the conversation on my side. And to "confirm" what you wrote, it's not unusual that after exposing my problem/demand I'm put on hold for 5/10 minutes while the employee is fetching the "domain expert to help with my problem".

Companies don't like it when you air out their dirty laundry.

I'd say being able to speak openly about a company is one of the few ways regular people have a chance of standing up to multinational corporations.

Specialised press would probably work well. Send the story to a few gaming news sites, post it on some Nintendo subreddits and the guy's situation may improve at least a bit.