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Compares complaining behaviour in traditional and technology‐based service encounters. Drawing on 160 negative critical incidents within Finnish retail banking, shows that, contradictory to common predictions, there are no significant differences in the complaining rates between the two types of service encounters. Attributes this finding to the high reliance of traditional complaining methods in both types of service encounters. Finds, however, that complaints about technology‐based service encounters have significantly higher response rates than complaints about traditional service encounters. Also, when focusing on technology‐based service encounters, finds that customers who actually consider themselves guilty for the outcome were the most frequent complainers, while the ones attributing the outcome to technology failures or service process failures complain less often. These findings have interesting implications for designers of service recovery systems.