The Complaint Letters
My youngest child’s sweet smile and faintly freckled ceramic doll complexion disarms people and makes her appear inviting on the approach. But, mess with her product or service quality expectations, and you can say good-bye to Meghan’s delightful side.
Mobile providers were among the first to experience Meghan’s lack of tolerance for inconsistent service delivery. Cell-phones became pervasive when she was in her late teens and along with them came confusing plans and long-term commitments. While she excelled at sniffing out the best deals and holding the providers to their advertised plans, some of her friends did not. “What? You’re paying how much? I thought you said you got a deal?”, I’d hear her say to her besties. She came home one night and told me how she took the phone company to task on a friend’s behalf.
“You phoned and pretended to be Lisa?”, I asked. I thought I’d misheard.
“Yes, of course I did. Lisa was too scared to call so I told her to sit beside me and feed me answers to the personal information questions,” she replied.
“And how’d that go?” I asked, conflicted between feelings of pride and disbelief.
She rolled her eyes, made a huffing sound, and looked at me like I was an idiot. “Fine. I got her monthly bill reduced and scored more phone minutes for her.”
I knew better than to ask additional questions.
Her streak continued when she applied for a summer job in our home town and was the victim of mail delivery inconsistency. She mailed her application and resume, stapled and paper-clipped together, in a 9 x 12 manila envelope so she wouldn’t have to fold anything. After waiting a few weeks, she heard people were getting calls for interviews so she followed up with the employer to make sure they’d received her application. They had not. The next day, her application came back in the mail, undelivered and marked insufficient postage. She’d just mailed another document with double the number of sheets and the same postage to a destination five hundred miles away and it had reached its destination. She was furious she’d missed out on a job opportunity. After a litany of exclamations that distorted her ceramic complexion and made her freckles stand out like punctuation marks, she phoned the postal service.
“How is it that my bulky envelope was successfully delivered to London, Ontario and my three pages didn’t make it a few miles from my house. I put the same postage on both. So basically, I overpaid, you under delivered, and it cost me a potential summer job.” Even after being called incompetent and inconsistent, the postal service apologized and promised to look into their processes. They also advised her to document her concern in an email. This resulted in ten free books of stamps. She felt somewhat vindicated.
When I’d hear people complain about a coin-operated machine eating their money, the story usually ended there. Not for Meghan. For a while, she lived in an apartment building where she did laundry in coin-operated washers and dryers. You know, those ones where the signs read, “Call this number if you experience problems with these machines.” I often wondered if anyone ever phoned and if so, what came of it. Well, Meghan answered my question. The dryer ate her 50 cents, she called the number on the sign, and they issued her a cheque for 50 cents.
My favourite Meghan complaint story, though, is one where she managed to receive generous compensation for an item she didn’t buy in the first place. While living in Kitchener and working at her first post-university full-time job, she was often invited over to my friend Ann’s place for dinner. Ann cooked all her favourites, being careful to respect Meghan’s dairy intolerance. One night, dessert included dairy-free chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, which in those days, wasn’t easy to find. Ann was so pleased her nearby grocery store had started carrying it. Laced with chocolate chips and chunks of chewy cookie dough, Meghan savoured her special treat. Ann even sent her home with a full and unopened tub of the same ice cream.
A few days later, ice-cream scoop at the ready, Meghan opened the tub and started filling her bowl. She was surprised. And not in a good way. Unlike what she had at Ann’s, there was no cookie dough in this tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. This was unacceptable. How dare they skimp on the very ingredient so essential to the product that it was even included in the name of the flavour? She wrote a letter to the ice-cream company, explaining in detail how the second tub fell short in comparison to the helping from the previous tub. When she told me this, it was my turn to roll my eyes (I hoped she couldn’t hear them over the phone). After I hung up, I had a good chuckle and doubted anything would come of it.
I got a call a few weeks later. “Mom, you won’t believe this. The ice-cream people responded to my complaint. I’m sending you a copy of the letter.”
The full-page letter contained a gushing apology and emphasized their sincere commitment to quality control. They promised to address and make improvements to this critical step in their manufacturing process. They went on to state how continuous quality improvement was at the core of their company’s mantra. I had to remind myself we were talking about ice cream and not pacemakers.
I had visions of the ice-cream company’s refrigerated truck arriving at the front doors of my daughter’s apartment building. I imagined an employee wearing a white lab coat and a solemn expression presenting her with a replacement tub. The reality was more bizarre. The company included a $20 grocery store gift card with their glowing apology letter.
“So first of all”, I reminded her, “You know that’s about five times the original cost of the ice cream, right?” All that got was a giddy giggle from my enterprising daughter. “And secondly, you didn’t even pay for the ice cream in the first place!”
She was ready for me. “Well, Ann wanted me to have it so she’d want me to enjoy good quality ice cream. I don’t see the problem.” Meghan used the gift card without guilt at her next grocery shopping outing. I told her she should market her complaint writing as a service for hire. She’d make a fortune. I could actually hear her eyes rolling.
Meghan’s tenacity and poison pen skills fill me with great parental pride, a little envy, and a bit of trepidation. I can only hope the products and services I deliver to my youngest child always live up to her standards.
