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"There's no Tootsie Roll in my Tootsie Roll Pop!" I cried, my plaintive voice rising in indignation.
"Why don't you write a letter to the company?" my mother said.
I was only five, but her sarcasm was not lost on me.
"All right I will," I muttered, crayoning my letter to the Tootsie Roll Company with whatever vocabulary of injustice I’d managed to acquire in five years, not counting the womb.
My mother, bless her, contributed an envelope and a stamp to the effort. The letter was posted.
To my immense delight and surprise (even at five I understood that petitioning authorities for anything at all could easily be an exercise in futility), not long afterwards I received in the mail a letter of apology from the Tootsie Roll Company, accompanied by A WHOLE BAG OF TOOTSIE ROLL POPS!
A maven was born.
In subsequent years I honed my complaint-letter-writing to a fine art. More often than not, I was rewarded with a token of recompense by the targeted company. Not to mention the additional benefit–you feel good after you write it. It's an emotional outlet.
Please note that I never faked my complaints. One recalls the famous Dry Cleaning Bill Scam: a guy duplicates, say, a $12.50 dry cleaning bill from an actual dry cleaning business in a large city. He sends copies to multiple high-end restaurant managers stating that a waiter had spilled red wine or salad dressing on his suit. Many managers will dash off a check for $12.50, considering it part of the cost of doing business.
$12.50 x 100 = $1,250. $12.50 x 500 = $6,250. You get the picture.
But my complaints were always legitimate. I wasn't looking to scam anyone, I only wanted justice served.
How to write your complaint letter:
It's always best to address your real letter (e-mail may not be as effective) to a person rather than a company. LinkedIn is a good source for searching out company executives in case the company website's customer service section lacks the appropriate contact details. You may want to send the letter certified or registered mail, to make sure it was received and to elicit more likelihood of a response. Include photos or other documentation with your letter.
In case this doesn’t work, more extreme measures may be called for.
I recall a story told by activist Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989). It may have referred to an environmental campaign to address the pollution in the St. Lawrence River in Upstate New York, but I’m not certain. In any event, Hoffman was trying to get his neighbors to sign a petition and participate in other activities designed to remedy the situation. The neighbors responded, almost universally, with comments such as “You can’t fight City Hall.”
Hoffman decided to prove otherwise. He created a fake ad that he placed in the local newspaper. It said something like:
Free Chain Saws! The U.S. Government has a surplus of chain saws which will be given away free to those sending a shipping crate* to the following address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
*One chain saw per crate.
As you can imagine, the White House Receiving Dept. was immediately inundated with shipping crates and requests for the free chain saws. (Upstate, who doesn’t need a chain saw?) The bizarre happening made the national news. Hoffman then made his follow-up visits to the neighbors: See? Your voice is important and will get attention. We need to clean up our river. Let’s do this!
Several years ago an episode with United Airlines went viral. Just after boarding their flight, guitarist Dave Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell were startled by another passenger yelling that the baggage handlers were throwing guitars to each other on the tarmac. The band rushed to the midsection of the plane in time to witness the abuse of the next victim, the electric bass. Upon arrival at the destination, Dave's expensive Taylor guitar was heavily damaged. He complained to United staff but was brushed off. After a year of writing letters to United Airlines requesting they pay for the damage, he finally received a response: "No."
In his words: In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn't deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United Breaks Guitars is the first of those songs.
Read the full story on Dave Carroll's website.
Don't mess with musicians; they have a lot more power than you think. True to his promise, Dave made a music video called United Breaks Guitars, telling the whole sad story with humor and a catchy tune.
He followed up with two more United Breaks Guitars videos, then a website, UnitedBreaksGuitar.com. But he didn't stop there. Dave parlayed the unfortunate event and its aftermath into a book as well. Here's an excerpt from the book description on Amazon:
Songwriter Dave Carroll wasn’t the first person abused by an airline’s customer service. But he was the first to show how one person, armed with creativity, some friends, $150, and the Internet, could turn an entire industry upside down.
United Airlines had broken Dave’s guitar in checked luggage. After eight months of pestering the company for compensation, he turned to his best tool—songwriting—and vowed to create a YouTube video about the incident that he hoped would garner a million views in one year. Four days after its launching, the first million people had watched "United Breaks Guitars." United stock went down 10 percent, shedding $180 million in value; Dave appeared on outlets as diverse as CNN and The View. United relented. And throughout the business world, people began to realize that "efficient" but inhuman customer-service policies had an unseen cost—brand destruction by frustrated, creative, and socially connected customers.
The next time you're frustrated with the lack of customer service from a company, channel your frustration into some meaningful action. Write a letter. Post your complaint on social media. Make a video (but make it funny or else it will die a serious death). Write a book. Do anything, but do something.
Over the years my complaint letters, in addition to providing an outlet for stress and also creativity, have led to reimbursements, replacements, airline vouchers, free meals and many other redeeming benefits.
You too can join with your fellow humans in putting the ‘service’ back in Customer Service, while exercising your creativity, relieving stress, and honing your writing skills all at the same time. Have at it!
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Coming off a tour to the East coast and back to the West coast, upon arrival at LAX, I was waiting for my baggage at the conveyor belt. Everything came out except the bass drum. I looked up and saw it loaded onto a baggage chute and come sliding down. I ran over the end of the chute and caught it before it hit the floor. One less letter to write.
that's brilliant!! my mother used to console us and to get over that terrible feeling of sadness, smothering our activism-gene in the process, I guess ;-))