The world's best complaint letter
I received this via email and had to save it for posterity. This is reputed to be an actual complaint letter from a customer of British cable company NTL. As always, if you're Robert Stokes and you want me to take it down, let me know.
I've often been this frustrated, but it takes some serious talent to express it this well:
Dear Cretins:
I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your four-in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, telephone, and alarm monitoring. 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 four 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% -- the hours between about 6 pm and midnight, Monday through Friday and most of the weekend. I am still waiting for my telephone connection.
I have made nine 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 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 answering 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 British Telecom was crap; that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations; and 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 NT 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. BT -- wankers though they are -- shine like brilliant beacons of success in the filthy 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 and will quickly be replaced by derision and even perhaps bemused rage.
I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cat's 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 your miserable short lives, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of twits.
May you rot in Hell,
Robert Stokes
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Posted by roadnick at November 8, 2003 06:55 PM
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I am interested in using this letter (slightly "cleaned up") in an AP English study guide for students. Can you help me with information on any copyright? I would be very grateful.
Denise
Oh, man, I don't have ANY idea where this first came from, hence my note that if Robert Stokes contacts me, I'll be happy to take it down. I suggest you try Snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com). I wish I could help you!
As far as general copyright, I have no idea, because this letter was allegedly written in Britain, so I don't know how US copyright applies (if it even does).
Sorry!
---- Nick
Hi I have a complaint letter of my own you may wish to study. It was sent to the British Tax Credit Department (British equivalent of the IRS). Any one can feel free to use it.
Tax Credit Complaint
I am writing to inform you that thanks to the incompetence and sheer bloody mindedness of your staff Christmas in my household was cancelled. Just 4 days before Christmas I discovered that my weekly tax credit of £136.90 was reduced to £36.09. Did I discover this by receiving a letter from your department…no I had to find out for myself when trying to access my bank account. Still it is hardly surprising that no letter was received as judging by your staff’s Cro-Magnon intellect they have yet to master the art of fire and are still scratching pictograms on the cave, that they are hopefully locked up in, wall with sticks and berries.
I expect you are about to put this letter in the bin, where I suspect most documentation ends up, but please hear me out…oh and if any of the words I am using are too big for you Collins do a very concise children’s Dictionary and Thesaurus set which I am sure will be of use.
On the 05th December 2005 my stepson moved out of our home. I informed you of this on the 09th December 2005. I was told that we would be receiving a new claim form shortly…yeah right I am still waiting. Then last week I received a payment into my bank of £37.01 I had no idea who it was from but I guess from subsequent events it was from yourselves. On the 21st December I went to our bank to withdraw the monies paid in by yourselves expecting it to be slightly reduced from the £136.90 we had been receiving only to find it was £100 less than I expected.
So I then made the first of many telephone calls to your offices. I say offices because for reasons that until now I could not fathom you have numerous offices and it is like a game of roulette which one you will get through to and when and if you do get through the staff in one office are either unable or I suspect unwilling to transfer you to the person that has been dealing with your claim. I now understand why you do this you have learnt a fundamental lesson of government “Plausible Denial” as in “I can only apologise but whoever it was that told you that shouldn’t have” in fact if you were to record that one phrase you could dispense with half your staff overnight.
In that first phone call to a girl whom I suspect had one of her two brain cells surgically removed before entering civil service I was informed that the reason for the huge reduction in my Tax Credit was that your department had over-paid me in excess of £780 this year and that from now until April I would only be receiving £36 per week. I could not understand how this over-payment could have occurred so my wife spoke to the girl and was told that it is common for such overpayments to occur at the start of the year and it was normal practise for you to claw it back at the end of the year. This made no sense to me at all so I telephoned again and spoke to , probably the only member of your staff who has advanced beyond the stone age, a manager called “Sam” of Team 67 in your Newcastle office. He listened to me and could not explain the massive drop either and told me he would ring me back with an explanation that same day. I must admit I viewed this promise with incredulity as “the same day” in civil service speak often translates as the same day next month. But true to his word Sam rang me back within 15 minutes with said explanation. He said that unfortunately when my stepson had been removed from our claim they had also inadvertently removed the date that he started full time education thus the computer showing that we were overpaid was in effect correct.
He told me that he would correct this error and re enter the missing date and would forward our claim for re-processing overnight. Sam apologised profusely for the error and the fact that the shortfall probably would not hit our bank account until after Christmas. I informed Sam that I would contact the Social Fund as that missing money was for our Christmas Dinner.
Unfortunately the Social Fund is populated by brain dead morons as well and because we had had an income of more than £15 per day this week we were not entitled to a loan.
So back on the phone I spoke to another man in one of your offices, he could not or would not transfer me to Sam, but after explaining all that had occurred he told me that he would put notes on our file explaining the error was yours and that I should go to my local Tax Office who at their discretion could make me a payment of the shortfall. I must admit I was full of admiration for this man he had come up with a common sense solution to a problem…All By Himself. So I drove to the Tax Office with joy in my heart in the knowledge that the problems I was experiencing were nearing an end only to be shot down in flames when I was confronted by yet another cave dweller at the Tax Office. I was told that your department should not have told me they can make discretionary payments because they cannot and that no such amendments were made to our claim in fact the local offices computer still showed an overpayment..
Yet another phone call to yourselves was made and after being transferred by a supervisor I was told that indeed no such notes were on our file and that although she could see we were indeed owed money we would not get it until after Christmas. When I told her that money was for our Christmas dinner and asked what I could do it was suggested I go without.
So as I started this letter thanks to the testical juggling staff in your department my families Christmas was cancelled this year. It is good to know that Ebenezer Scroodge is alive and well and working in the Tax Credits Office. I would have said how amazed at the Three Stooges like professionalism and competence displayed by all but one of your staff but I’m not. All but one of your staff are in fact the puss filled boil on the arse of humanity although said staff could not find either said boil or arse with two hands a torch and SatNav. With the exception of Sam in Newcastle I hope that you all had a rotten a Christmas as I did and that the testicals of your male staff and the breasts of your female staff turn square and fester in the corners. Finally there must be a special mention for the miserly supervisor who suggested I forgo Christmas dinner I must I feel recommend her promotion to a position that will give her ample access to both sex and travel. Not that I think for one moment you have the grey matter to understand that last comment but I am sure if you find somebody outside of the civil service they will be able to explain it.
Yours faithfully
Andrew MacLeod
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