The advent of “consumerism” in the NHS puts an increased importance on finding out what consumers of health services think about the treatment which they receive. Describes a consumer satisfaction survey of mental health services. The focus is not on the outcome of the survey but on the difficulties encountered whilst conducting it. Because of the strategic value of consumer satisfaction information, only a small proportion of surveys undertaken are published and hence the difficulties of this kind of research are rarely discussed. Pays particular attention to the effect which clinicians′ resistance to the survey had on data collection. It is important for health service managers to be aware of the process of consumer satisfaction surveys, so that they may better judge the value of their outcome.