UK/US Complaint of the Year 2004 Letter

[spoon]

Below is a copy of a letter that won a competition in UK as complaint letter of the year...

A real-life customer complaint letter sent to NTL (A british telecommunications company, which are totally shit at Customer Service ...)

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone. During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office:

My initial installation was cancelled without warning, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website....HOW?

I alleviated the boredom by playing with my testicles for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept. The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill-bit, and his cerebrum. Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks my modem arrived... six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it.

I estimate your internet server's downtime is roughly 35%... hours between about 6pm -midnight, Mon-Fri, and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 calls on my mobile to your no-help line, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone
will call me back); that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back); that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off); that I will be transferred to someone (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed); that I will be transferred to someone and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman...and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were sh*t, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there? How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum incompetents of the highest order.

British Telecom - w**kers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy. Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps bemused rage. I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and its worthless employees.

Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twats.

[spoon]

Heres another (this one is American):

Beer's suckpoint
Miller Brewing Company

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have been a drinker of Miller beer's for many years (actually, ever since that other company donated a big chunk of change to Handgun Control Inc. back in the mid 80's).

Initially, my beer of choice was Lite, but some time in mid 1990 while in Honduras I switched to MGD smuggled up from Panama. Now, for nearly six years, I have been a faithful drinker of MGD.

For these past years, I have come to expect certain things from Genuine Draft. I expect that whenever I see that gold can of MGD, I am about ready to enjoy a great, smooth brew.

But wait! Sometime around the first of the year, my beloved MGD changed colors, so to speak. That familiar gold can was no longer gold! Knowing that I am, by nature, somewhat resistant to change, I forced myself to reserve judgment on the new can design.

Gradually, I grew to appreciate the new label.

That was until about May of this year. That was when I discovered (empirically) that I really didn't like the new design. Further investigation of the cause of my distress resulted in the following observations:

1. Your cans are made of aluminum.
2. Aluminum is a great conductor of energy.
3. Your beer is commonly consumed outside, and thus, the container may be exposed to sunlight.
4. Sunlight striking the can causes radiant warming of the surface of the can.
5. The resultant heat (energy) is transferred through the aluminum, by conduction, to the contents of the can (the beer).
6. Warm beer sucks.

This is a process that can be observed in just about any beer. However, this process is significantly accelerated in MGD because you painted the damn can black!!!

Who was the rocket scientist that designed the new graphic for the can and implemented the change right before summer? Granted, this process may not be real evident up there in Wisconsin, but down here in Oklahoma (OR TEXAS) where the summers are both sunny and hot, this effect is quite a problem. There's no telling what the folks in Texas and Arizona are having to put up with. (NO SH*T !)

Knowing that you would probably not address this issue unless you had firm evidence of a problem, I and several other subjects conducted extensive experimentation. The results of these experiments are listed below.

The experiments were conducted over two days on the deck next to my pool. The study included seven different types of beer (leftovers from a party the previous weekend) that were initially chilled to8 (and then left exposed to sunlight for different lengths of time. These beers were sampled by the test subjects at different intervals. The subjects, all normally MGD drinkers, were asked at each sampling interval their impressions of the different beers.

The length of time between the initial exposure to sunlight and the point where the subject determined the sample undrinkable (the Suckpoint) was determined. The average ambient temperature for the trials was 95 degrees F.


Beer Type Average Suckpoint (min)
Miller Lite (white can) 6.2
Bud (white can) 5.5
Bud Lite (silver can) 5.2
Ice House (blue and silver can) 4.4
Coors Lite (silver can) 4.1
Miller Genuine Draft (black can) 2.8
Coors (gold can) 0.1


It was evident that the color of the can directly correlates to the average suckpoint, except for Coors which was pretty much determined to suck at any point.

It is to be hoped that you will consider re-designing your MGD cans. All beer drinkers that are not smart enough to keep their beer in the shade will thank you.

Sincerely,

Bradley Lee Beer-drinker


THE RESPONSE!!

Dear Bradley Lee,

Thank you for your letter and your concern about the MGD can color as it relates to premature warming of the contents. Like you, we at Miller Beer take beer drinking very seriously. To that end, we have taken your letter and subsequent experiment under serious consideration. Outlined below are our findings and solution to your problem. May we add that we have had similar letters from other loyal beer drinkers, mostly from the Southern United States.

First, let us congratulate you on your findings. Our analysis tends to agree with yours regarding Coors. It certainly does suck at about any temperature.

Now, it was our intentions when redesigning the MGD can to create better brand identity and brand loyalty. Someone in marketing did some kind of research and determined we needed to redesign the can. You will be pleased to know, we have fired that idiot and he is now reeking havoc at a pro-gun control beer manufacturer. The design staffer working in cahoots with the marketing idiot was also down-sized.

However, once we realized this mistake, to undo it would have been even a bigger mistake. So, we took some other actions. From our market research, we found a difference between Northern beer drinker and Southern beer drinkers.

Beer drinkers in the South tend to drink slower than beer drinkers in the North. We are still researching why that is. Anyway, at Miller Beer, it was never our intentions to have someone take more than 2.5 minutes to enjoy one of our beers. We pride ourselves in creating fine, smooth, quick drinking beers and leave the making of sissy, slow sipping beers to that Sam guy in Boston.

However, it is good to know that you feel our Miller Lite can last as long as 6 minutes. However, may we suggest in the future you try consuming at least two in that time frame.

From your letter, we had our design staff work 'round the clock to come up with a solution that would help not just MGD but all our fine Miller products. We hope you have recently noticed our solution to your problem. We found that the hole in the top of the can was not big enough for quick consumption. So, we have now introduced the new "Wide Mouth" cans. We hope this will solve all your problems. Might I also suggest that if you want to get the beer out of the can even faster, you can poke a hole on the side near the bottom, hold your finger over it, open the can, tip it to your mouth and then pull your finger off the hole. This is a common way to drink beer at parties and impress your friends. This technique is known as "shot-gunning". You should like the name.

Again, thank you for your letter and bring to our attention that there might be other beer drinkers taking more that 2.5 minutes to drink our beers. Let me assure you that I am having our advertising department work on campaign to solve this problem, too.

Sincerely,

Tom B. Miller
Public Relations
Miller Brewing Co. P.S. And remember, at Miller Beer we do favor gun control, too. So please use two hands when firing.