20 March 2012

Writing letters of complaint

Letters of complaint are the ones that I often compose in my head and seldom send.

I am sure you all know those moments when you’re overcome with irritation with your telecommunications provider or whoever it is who has let you down.

Usually, the irritation passes and we move on. But occasionally, we do need to write or submit a complaint online when we want to: 
  • Have the problem fixed
  • Receive compensation
  • Prevent other people sharing our experience 

Sometimes I think a letter is better than submitting a complaint online because you take the time to crystallise your thoughts and get to the point. When you’re angry or upset, it’s easy to write a ‘who did what, when’ type of complaint that rambles until you reach your word limit.

Once I submitted such a poorly written complaint online that the response I got was: Before we can proceed with your complaint, we need your customer number... (I wasn’t a customer, just a complainer!)  If I’d been writing a letter, I would have summarised the ‘who did what, when’ background into a sentence or two, or if I thought it was all relevant, I might have put it in table form or as an attachment.

If you’re the sort of person who, like me, writes letters in your head but rarely sends them, you might find this website useful: http://www.complaintline.com.au/index.html The site even has a template letter to get you started.

And there is a website where you vent your complaints and if they are not resolved, your vents are made public: http://www.uvent.com.au

When my children were little, I wrote a children's story around letter writing, which you can listen to on YouTube.

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