Letter Man

By Chuck Kucera

In a world where customer service was delivered by postal mail instead of social media, one man dared to unleash his complaints on corporate America, armed with a single defective typewriter and a hoard of bad ideas.

Letter Man is a series of bizarre complaints and suggestions to business about their products and services. What evidence of UFOs do the people of JIF Peanut Butter have in their possession? What conspiracy against the American public is Campbell’s Soup allegedly propagating? Does Elmer’s Glue support cruel and unusual punishment? Read the complaint letter, then discover how each company chose to respond. How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? The world will finally know!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chuck Kucera
• Release date: Apr 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311014535

Chuck Kucera

Chuck Kucera is a non-author's author. His book, Letter Man, was never designed to be a book. After dabbling in stand-up comedy, Chuck began writing funny and outrageous letters to companies with various complaints. This was done primarily for the amusement of himself and friends. Eventually, he wrote over 70 letters, and compiled them, along with the responses he received, into what became Letter Man.

Book preview

Dedication

To my son, Jack.

I hope that someday this book makes you laugh.

To my wife, Stacy.

You put up with a series of verbal letters every day.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I – The Responders

Campbell’s Soup

JIF Peanut Butter

Ace Hardware

Life Savers

Healthy Choice

Jelly Belly

Hostess Twinkies

Mr. Phipps Tater Crisps

Brother Industries, Ltd.

Dr. Scholl’s

Kiwi Shoe Polish

Master Locks

Webster’s Dictionary

Vaseline Intensive Care

McDonald’s

PAM Cooking Spray

Wendy’s

La-Choy

Pepto Bismol

Nike

Kool-Aid

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese

Just For Men

MGM Grand

First Alert

American Airlines

Texas Instruments

The Goodyear Blimp

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

State Farm

NASA

Sylvania Light Bulbs

Pepsi

Miracle-Gro

Lender’s Bagels

Tide

Lucent Technologies

Zephyrhills

Green Giant

President Bill Clinton

Zoo Animal Crackers

Tootsie Roll

Florida Department of Transportation

Zest Soap

Part II – Dead Letter Office

Elmer’s Glue

ACLU

Bit O’Honey

1-800-Flowers

L’eggs

Motel 6

Atari

NBA

Nestle’s Quik

Trivial Pursuit

2000 Flushes

Spaghetti Warehouse

Smithsonian Institute

Domino’s Pizza

Mobil

Bill Gates

KFC

Suddenly Salad

Hoover

Taco Bell

Harvard University

The Price is Right

General Fire Extinguisher

Iowa Cubs

President Jacques Chirac

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Spring Valley Vitamins

3M

Postscript

Preface

My earliest memories of writing complaint letters to companies were earned from watching my father seek justice with a pen and paper. He worked for 3M, a manufacturing company with a strong reputation for producing high-quality products. If a product he purchased did not live up to the standard he had in mind, a letter was soon to follow. This was the 1970’s and 1980’s, when customer service was a premium in several industries, so in most cases, Dad got a satisfying response. A couple in particular stand out from my childhood.

A co-worker of his had bought a package of Old Dutch potato chips from a vending machine at work. It looked like a normal package, but had actually been sealed with no chips inside – just a big bag of air for 35 cents. The co-worker showed the bag to my Dad and was just going to throw it away. But my Dad saw the opportunity, punched a pin hole in the bad to deflate it, and mailed the mostly intact bag to Old Dutch along with his letter of complaint. Within two weeks, an apology and a case of Old Dutch potato chips were at our door.

In the mid-1980’s, Nike was big in basketball shoes. My brother was a good high school basketball player and had convinced my Dad to spend the money and buy him a pair of Nike high tops. After several months of daily basketball play, the shoes began to come apart. Seeing his investment in the high tops coming to an end decades earlier than he thought it would, Dad shipped the shoes back to Nike with a letter. Within a couple weeks, an apology and a gift certificate from Nike to replace the shoes had arrived.

Fast-forward to 1993. I was a junior in college, and would occasionally spend some of my surplus money on sports cards. Baseball season was just about to start, so a couple friends and I started buying packs of the newest 1993 baseball cards, including a popular brand called Upper Deck. Upper Deck had a reputation for producing high-quality cards, and in 1993 had introduced a card that was thicker with an ultra-glossy finish.

In March of 1993, a couple friends and I set out on a Spring Training trip to Arizona to watch exhibition baseball games. We had planned to get autographs from some of the players, so I had taken some of these new Upper Deck cards along with me to get signed.

One evening while on our trip, I had left a couple cards on the nightstand by my bed at the hotel, right next to a glass of ice water. When I woke up in the morning, condensation from the glass had formed and touched one of the cards. This caused the card to split into two pieces, one being the front of the card and the other the back. We experimented with another card and found it did the same thing when exposed to water.

Following the trip, I showed the card pieces to one of my collecting friends, explaining how the water had split the cards in two. We had heard through an industry publication that Upper Deck would replace damaged cards for any reason, as a commitment to their quality. So we decided to mail the cards back to Upper Deck for a replacement.

Being obnoxious college kids, however, we decided that rather than relay the actual events surrounding the damaged cards, we would concoct a ridiculous story about the cards to see what kind of response we would receive. So we stated that we were professional scuba divers who routinely kept cards submerged, and that we were appalled that something like a card splitting into two pieces under water could occur. To our amazement, Upper Deck wrote back, replacing the cards and offering an apology.

I was hooked. What other companies would respond to ridiculous claims about their products or services? And, given my Dad’s track record, was there a chance I could get some free stuff from the perceived shortcomings of these companies? My letter-writing quest was under way.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks is extended to Steve Uerling, who was the co-conspirator on my initial letter to Upper Deck back in 1993 that got this whole thing started. Steve fueled the fire of many of my initial letters.

Thanks to my former co-worker, Dave Schatzmann for his idea which led to the Vaseline Intensive Care letter.

A tip of the hat to Paul Rosa, whose much funnier book, Idiot Letters, ingrained in me the idea of asking for a T-shirt from several of the companies. If you enjoy this book at all, do yourself a favor and get a copy of Idiot Letters.

Introduction

The collection of letters in this book was never intended to be a book at all. I began keeping a copy of the letters I would send after receiving the response from Upper Deck. Regrettably, I never kept a copy of that original Upper Deck letter, since I would have enjoyed reading the response much more had I kept the original letter. So I started printing an extra copy of each letter I sent to keep for reference, and of course, I always kept each company’s response letter.

The process of writing the letters was truly enjoyable. Generating the ideas for the letters was always the challenging part. Since the letters were being written for my own amusement instead of trying to complete a book, I often went months between letters, or sometimes would write 3 in one week if the right ideas came to me. During this time, I did pay a lot of attention to product labels and advertisements to see what possible complaints could be generated based upon the products’ claims.

Once I had the idea in place, writing the actual content of the letters flowed quite easily. I had taken an acting class in college about how to build a character, and approached the writing of the letters with the same process I had used in that class. I treated the author of each letter as a separate character or persona, and tried hard to get into the mindset of that character as he described his dilemma. Often, it worked very well in developing the original idea behind the letter to where I wanted it to go. Sometimes not so much.

Eventually, I had a couple dozen letters and responses that I put into a folder and gave to friends to read. The letters got a good reception from my friends. I found myself lending the folder out more and more, so I decided to make copies of the letters and get them bound so it would be easy for my friends to read and