This article responds to research carried out in relation to collecting offenders’ perceptions of their experience of accredited programmes during a probation order. This paper returns to questions about offender rights and how the practice of gathering ‘customer’ views about the service they receive is managed. The research team recognised through the design and collection of offender perceptions that different stakeholders valued and used the information for different purposes, but where does this position the ‘customer’ in this kind of dynamic? This paper seeks to outline the potential, pitfalls and limitations of this kind of practice in probation and other areas of criminal justice.