For your complaint to be addressed, it must first be put in writing–whether in a letter and/or an email. Most likely, several letters and/or emails.
Even in our video-oriented society, the written word still carries far greater weight than the spoken one. A document can be used as evidence in a civil lawsuit.
If you cringe at writing it yourself, you can ask someone else to write it for you. But if s/he lacks excellent judgment and literary skills, you’ll be no better-off.
At best, the letter will prove ineffective and be ignored. At worst, it could open you to charges of libel and/or extortion.
And even if the person can write an effective letter on your behalf, chances are you’ll have to pay for that service.
If you decide to write the letter yourself, you’ll find highly effective advice in Shocked, Appalled, and Dismayed: How to Write Letters of Complaint That Get Results, by Ellen Phillips.
Among the subjects she covers–in detail–are:
- Who to write to, what to say, what to ask for.
- The names and addresses of over 600 major companies.
- How to draft personal petitions covering everything from tenant-landlord disputes to workman’s compensation.
- What steps to take to avoid litigation.
My own tips for writing a successful complaint letter are:
- Remove any vulgar or profane words.
- Don’t make sweeping accusations: “Your agency is a waste.”
- Stick to facts you know can be proved: The who, what, when, where, how and why of reporting.
- Don’t attribute motives to people you’ve had problems with. You don’t know why someone did what he did.
- Cite the names and titles of any airline employees who (1) witnessed the reason for your complaint, or (2) were witnesses to it.
- Show how the failure of the official to address your problem reflects badly on the company: “This is not the level of service your ads would lead potential customers to expect.”
- If there is a specific action the airline can take to redress your complaint, be sure to mention it. (You can be so angry when making a complaint that you forget to say what you want the company to do to resolve it.)
- Be reasonable and realistic in what you ask for.
- If you want reimbursement for expenses you had to make (such as hotel lodgings) owing to the airline’s fault, then provide copies of receipts.
- Emphasize your desire to resolve the complaint amicably and privately within the company.
- If necessary, note any regulatory agencies that can make life rough for the company if your complaint isn’t resolved.
- Cite the applicable law(s) under which it can be sued: “According to the Passenger Bill of Rights….”
- Make certain the airline knows you expect a reply within a certain length of time: “I would appreciate your response within the next 10 business days.”
Of course, your overture(s) may be ignored. Or you might feel the airline has not made a good-faith effort to compensate you.
In either case, you have two more courses of action to pursue.
- Threatening the airlines with bad publicity; and
- Threatening the airlines with a private lawsuit.
Thanks to the Internet, it’s far easier to spread the word about companies that mistreat their customers.
“Fly the Friendly Skies” is no longer n advertising slogan (even at United Airlines, which popularized it). But airlines spend millions of dollars a year on selling just that image of themselves.
So anything that threatens to throw mud on that image is guaranteed to set off alarm-bells at corporate headquarters. Especially if that mud is well-deserved.
An easy way to avenge airline mistreatment is to make full use of a wide array of consumer-opinion websites.
It’s important to check out each website carefully to increase your chances of having your complaint resolved.
- Most websites simply offer a forum to vent your spleen.
- Others promise to take various forms of action on your behalf–such as directing your complaint to the airline or a government agency.
- Others offer to refer your complaint to an attorney.
- Many of these are free.
- Others charge a nominal fee (such as $5) for posting your complaint.
- Some complaint websites are run by the Federal Government–such as those of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
- Some are run by individual states–such as the Office of the California Attorney General.
- The major airlines provide “file a complaint” pages on their websites.
WARNING: What you say online can hurt you. Accuse someone of criminal or shameful behavior, and you can be sued for libel. Threaten someone with exposure or financial ruin and you can be privately sued and/or criminally prosecuted for extortion.
And once you click on the “Send” button, there’s no recalling your email.
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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE EGO
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on October 29, 2013 at 12:58 pmWhy do so many CEOs hate President Barack Obama?
It isn’t because they’re being over-taxed and -regulated,d as so many on the Right would have you believe.
According to a January 16, 2013 story published in Bloomberg:
Click here: Corporate Profits Soar as Executives Attack Obama Policy – Bloomberg
So if money isn’t the issue, what is?
In a word: Ego.
Jonathan Alter, author of The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies, provides some eye-opening insights into relations between the President and business leaders.
He notes, for example, that even before taking office as President in 2009, Obama pushed through Congress the second $350 billion portion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
And he stablilized the almost-wrecked American financial system with stress tests and regulatory reforms.
So Obama believed that business CEOs would be grateful for his efforts on their behalf.
And what did the President get in return?
CEOs visiting the White House often believed the President didn’t take them seriously.
For example, many of them wanted a tax amnesty on their overseas earnings. And Obama would ask: How will the government make up for the lost Treasury revenues that would come from such a huge tax break?
Many CEOs thought he was not taking them seriously.
Obama was in fact being serious, and was hoping that his greed-obsessed visitors would help him find an answer that would satisfy both parties.
What the President apparently didn’t understand was this: Most CEOs weren’t used to being dealt with on an equal basis.
They were used to people cowering before them, or instantly agreeing with anything they said.
For Obama, who had taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago from 1992 to 2004, such intellectual querys were routine. He had enjoyed the cut-and-thrust of such exchanges with his law students.
But his law students had not been billionaires with billionaire-sized egos.
One Wall Street CEO charged that Obama regarded intellectuals as a cut above political operatives–and two cuts above businessmen.
As Alter writes: “Being worth a billion dollars wasn’t going to get the President…to believe that your insights were better than anyone else’s.”
Obama was angered that many CEOs felt that nothing should change–even after the excesses of greed-fueled banks almost destroyed the nation’s economy in 2008.
Thus, bank CEOs had furiously opposed the Dodd-Frank bank re-regulations that had been imposed to prevent a recurrence of such abuses.
Obama felt that bankers were ungrateful for his pushing through the second part of the TARP program that had saved their corporations from the CEOs’ own self-destructive greed.
As Alter sums up: “The complex psychology of business confidence was only partly about their tax rates and the threat of regulation; the real problem was personal.
“They [businessmen] had an intuitive sense that Obama didn’t particularly like them, and they responded in kind.”
These are not the kinds of insights you’ll get by reading the highly sanitized bios of corporate chieftains.
As a result, during the 2012 Presidential race, Mitt Romney received nearly $150 million, or more than 15% of his total money raised, from New York. Which meant mostly from Wall Street.
“We got a lot of Barack Obama’s Wall Street money,” said Spencer Zwick, Romney’s finance director, after the campaign.
A passage from Finley Hooper’s classic Roman Realities puts an ancient-world spin on Obama’s relations with wealthy businessmen.
Assessing the reasons for why so many patricians hated Julius Caesar, Hooper writes:
“Caesar…like a teacher, seemed always to be directing affairs in a world of children–chiding one, patting another–yet too far above them all to care about hurting any.
“To less gifted men, however, his aloofness, even if mixed with kindness, was thought to be patronizing. They could not believe that in his heart he really cared about them.
“Caesar never bothered to ask for another man’s opinion. He lacked the tact by which a talented person might reasure others that they have worth, too.
“Pardons, jobs or favors did not completely satisfy the recipients’ craving for attention….
“Caesar…was a supreme egotist wrapped up in his own sense of well-being and good service to the state.
“…For all his experience and sophistication, he had never learned how ungrateful men can be–especially those who feel ignored.”
It has been President Obama’s bad luck–like that of Julius Caesar– to find himself at odds with powerful men whose profits he has greatly expanded.
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