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Need help for an angry letter

 
 
bitchiekittie
13:58 / 18.08.03
(crossposted on my lj, sorry)

I wanted to share this with you, so maybe some of you more articulate types can start firing off letters, or maybe toss some ideas my way. I work for a company that not only subscribes to this publication, but also regularly recruits through the paper and it's website. the women writing in the following link do a fantastic job communicating their disappointment in a very firm and reasonable way. I can't hope to do it nearly as well, but I'd like to give it a shot, and I hope you will, too:

no, really, click it

their answers are extraordinarily piss poor.

seriously, I realize this isn't the only thing going on, but I'd really like to make my first letter of complaint an effective one. I'd really appreciate any pointers on the best way to go about writing an angry letter. also, if you'd like to write and/or spread this, that would be good, too.
 
 
grant
14:28 / 18.08.03
Uh, just so people who don't click the link know, it's about a paper not running an announcement for a same-sex commitment ceremony.

The key to writing an angry letter, as far as I know, is to not actually be angry. To pay close attention to grammar, and to indicate strongly your disappointment in the receiver's failure to live up to some promise or implied guarantee of service. In other words, convey that they are a disappointment. I think it's OK to say "I am angry," but not OK to continue with, "you pack of fuckwit baboon-fiddlers."

I might also use the construction, "This shortcoming makes you appear..." and then fill in the blank with words that sum up your anger, like "homophobic, cold-hearted and socially regressive," or something along those lines. So you're not directly calling them these things, but telling them that the impression they're giving is that they are these things.
 
 
Eloi Tsabaoth
14:38 / 18.08.03
"This shortcoming makes you appear like a pack of fuckwit baboon-fiddlers."
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
15:30 / 18.08.03
I imagine myself as a haughty Regency aristocrat and put on my best insufferably polite and withering manner - just sound really stiff. This technique only works when you are writing - if you do it to people's faces they laugh at you, which is rather depressing...
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:46 / 18.08.03
A little humour/creative mockery often helps in getting the thing passed around as many employees of said company as possible - the full text of a particularly successful (£40 off the bill, I think) angry letter of mine is included below. My favourite bits are bolded for your viewing pleasure: I am pathetically proud of this one.

I hope it's of help if you want to write to the Balti Sun. Nice of them to offer a special gay Commitments section right next to Garage Sales and Help Wanted ...

To: Telewest
address
address
postcode


Dear Sir or Madam,

Re: Bill for account and payment reference number xxxxxxx/1
Account name: Whisky Priestess
Bill dates: 15 April 2002 and 13 May 2002

Yet again I am astonished and perversely impressed by the appalling lows of customer service to which your company is capable of sinking. Some of the highlights of last year have, admittedly, not been bettered: we have not (yet), for example, had our phone line cut off for two months for no discernible reason, suffered the visitation of eight equally incompetent engineers to fix it, and received no compensation of any kind for the inconvenience and expense incurred. I and my housemates can, I am sure you may imagine, hardly wait for some equally impressive disaster to befall our phone or TV service in 2002. And to give Telewest its due, you do seem to be trying.

To receive a bill for £71.24 on 15 April which charged, in retrospect and in advance, for a digital TV service which my housemate Mr Anonymous had attempted and naively believed he had managed to cancel when he moved out in late March of this year, was mildly inconvenient and insulting, but I felt sure Telewest could do better, and I was not disappointed. I phoned your customer service line and after speaking with a customer service representative, managed (finally) to get the full-spectrum TV service reduced to the basic package from that day (4th May I believe) on, and consequently, the CSR informed me, our bill would now be subject to a reduction of £20.
"So I only pay £51.24?" I said.
"That's right," she confirmed.
Off I tootled to the Post Office and paid the reduced amount, (copy of receipt enclosed) in the innocent belief that this would satisfy Telewest until the next bill arrived. What could possibly go wrong? Ask a silly question …

Three days after paying the reduced amount I was a little more inconvenienced and insulted (although not, alas, particularly surprised) to find that my payment of the agreed new total of April's bill had been completely ignored and that I and my household were now expected to pay a grand total of £187.32 – that is to say, April's original total of £71.24 plus May's bill of £116.08 (£72.70 for phone plus £43.38 for internet/TV). Needless to say, I was certainly not prepared to pay yet again, and hoped against hope that Telewest would realise that the problem lay, as usual, with its own bottomless incompetence and disregard for customers' expectations of a reasonable minimum standard of service.

Well, that sure didn't happen, and of course as the phone was cut off due to, forgive the scare-quotes, "non-payment" of April's bill, it was rather difficult, not to mention prohibitively expensive on my mobile phone, to get into contact with Telewest to point out the error of its ways: hence this letter.

I am sure your company is well aware that it enjoys what amounts to a monopoly in my part of London for customers who wish to have digital TV. What other excuse can there be for such abysmal treatment of people who simply want to pay for and receive a service from a company which, last time I looked, claims to be a service provider? The only reason I can imagine or give for anyone putting up with Telewest for more than a few months is that there is simply no alternative.

I am by now resigned to not receiving a reliable or satisfactory service from Telewest or its engineers or service personnel – for whom, by the way, I feel extreme sympathy: the fact that they almost never have a clue is, I feel, the fault of the Byzantine voodoo bureaucracy of your company rather than that of its employees. However, what surprised me about this latest dreary cock-up is that now even my right to pay for what in some parallel universe might laughingly be called a service, appears to have been rescinded.

Quite frankly, if I could afford to lose the hair, I would be tearing it out in despair at this point. As it is, I await your explanation and apology for the above chain of events with eager anticipation.

Yours sincerely,

Whisky Priestess

cc
Consumer Rights Administrator
BBC Watchdog, (A UK programme that investigates dodgy companies)
201 Wood Lane
London
W12 7TS
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
15:54 / 18.08.03
I'm in love with the phrase "permit me to point out" for use in genteely irate correspondance. As in, "Permit me to point out that you're a bunch of fuckwit baboon-fiddlers."
 
 
Whisky Priestess
16:05 / 18.08.03
or "loath as I am to (whatever)"

"Loath as I am to mention that you, said pack of fuckwits, fiddle baboons ..."
 
 
Mourne Kransky
16:07 / 18.08.03
All good advice. I do enjoy sending off angry letters.

Tips:
1) Find out the name of the Chief Executive of the company and address it to hir, with full "dictating this to my secretary" business flourishes. No point bothering those poor beleaguered souls in Customer Relations who are specially trained to absorb your venom but are out of the operations loop or too far down the food chain to help.

2) End with an impressive cc. list so they think you've copied this damning document to your MP, Citizen's Advice Bureau, BBC Watchdog, the relevant regulating body, John Humphreys and the Today programme, "Dear Anna" in the Guardian, whoever. Not that you actually have to bother sending the copies.

3) Buy a jiffy bag and a pooper scooper*.

*I have never actually done this but sometimes it would be deserved. The problem is the poor soul who has to open the mail and suffer the insult wouldn't be the person responsible for your misery and rage.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
16:11 / 18.08.03
Can I correct my earlier post? People tend to laugh at me when I do that. Your mileage may vary.
 
 
bitchiekittie
15:29 / 19.08.03
thanks for the advice.

I've begun a very rough draft, and have decided that my angle will be the numbers. I've asked our marketing person to try to get a hold of the traffic for the baltimore sun. even if the numbers (of gay readers) aren't high, I'll remind them that it isn't just the gay community that's going to take this blatant discrimination to heart. in any event, having that informatin can't hurt.

there's also a saying that I've heard, that every letter of complaint you receive represents x amount of others who feel the same...does anyone know if this actually something that can conceivably be measured? and how? if you can point me to some reliable research sources, I'd appreciate it

I'm also wondering if I should contact vendors, forward them my letter and additional information that I might come across?

and as for the sun, sunspot.net (the sun's online edition) reports they aren't ready to talk about it. hunh?
 
  
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