How to Complain [More] Effectively

By Charles M. Dobbs

Charles M. Dobbs is a recently retired professor of history from Iowa State University; previously, he was a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He taught courses in US and East Asian history, with a focus on diplomatic and military history. He authored five monographs, several dozen scholarly articles, and more than three hundred encyclopedia entries mostly focused in these areas. One of his favorite courses to teach was research methods, where he discussed how to frame the question, find appropriate materials and sources, and how to organize those sources and write up the materials in a compelling fashion. Dobbs earned his BA from the University of Connecticut and his MA and PhD degrees from Indiana University, all three in history.

During his nearly four decades as a faculty member, Dobbs also spent fifteen years as assistant to the president. Duties included looking into complaints, overseeing, editing, and/or originating the presidents correspondence, helping organize outreach, and interacting with various publics.

Separately, Dobbs has a long history of writing letters when he was disappointed in a product or a service he received. He has always believed that companies and organizations are strengthened by logical, well-argued letters drawing attention to a problem area.

From these twin experiences comes this book, How to Complain [More] Effectively. It reflects experience in complaining about situations as well as having to look into such complaints to determine if the institution was at fault; and if it was, to offer a reasonable resolution, and if it acted correctly, to explain the situation and correct the record to reflect that appropriate action.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496952684

Charles M. Dobbs

Charles M. Dobbs is a recently retired professor of history from Iowa State University; previously, he was a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He taught courses in US and East Asian history, with a focus on diplomatic and military history. He authored five monographs, several dozen scholarly articles, and more than three hundred encyclopedia entries mostly focused in these areas. One of his favorite courses to teach was research methods, where he discussed how to frame the question, find appropriate materials and sources, and how to organize those sources and write up the materials in a compelling fashion. Dobbs earned his BA from the University of Connecticut and his MA and PhD degrees from Indiana University, all three in history. During his nearly four decades as a faculty member, Dobbs also spent fifteen years as assistant to the president. Duties included looking into complaints, overseeing, editing, and/or originating the president’s correspondence, helping organize outreach, and interacting with various publics. Separately, Dobbs has a long history of writing letters when he was disappointed in a product or a service he received. He has always believed that companies and organizations are strengthened by logical, well-argued letters drawing attention to a problem area. From these twin experiences comes this book, How to Complain [More] Effectively. It reflects experience in complaining about situations as well as having to look into such complaints to determine if the institution was at fault; and if it was, to offer a reasonable resolution, and if it acted correctly, to explain the situation and correct the record to reflect that appropriate action.

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© 2014 Charles M. Dobbs. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/11/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5269-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5268-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014920207

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One Introduction

Chapter Two My Previous History With Complain Letters

Chapter Three The Chinese Censorate

Chapter Four Gathering Your Facts

Chapter Five Organizing Your Argument

Chapter Six Writing The Letter

Chapter Seven Real World Complaint Letters

Chapter Eight In General, Be Polite

Chapter Nine How To Find Contact Information For The Ceo

Chapter Ten You Do Not/Can Not Do

Chapter Eleven Write A Letter Of Appreciation [For Good Service Or A Good Deed]

Chapter Twelve Complaining In Person

Chapter Thirteen Complaining Over The Telephone

Chapter Fourteen Last Resorts

Chapter Fifteen A Final Word

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

You purchase a food item at the grocery and when you prepare it at home, it did not come out or taste like the advertisement promised.

You visit a store intending to purchase an item you saw on a national advertisement – on television or in a newspaper insert – and the store clerk informs you that price is not valid.

You fill out the form for a rebate on a purchase and weeks later you learn the company claims you did not qualify and denies your rebate.

You see several people in line ahead of you receiving good treatment from a store employee yet you receive different treatment and wonder why?

You call the toll free customer service line and either the constant automatic diverting [it’s not really an answering] system wears you down or the representative, when you finally reach a representative, cannot give you satisfaction.

I’m sure it has happened to you. You were dissatisfied with some interaction – perhaps something you purchased, perhaps a service you received, perhaps a promise not fulfilled or not fulfilled as you had expected. Depending on your personality, you may have felt stressed; you may have wanted to throttle someone; you may have done something you later regretted, yelling at someone and all too often at the wrong someone.

And what did you do afterwards to relieve this stress and gain resolution or satisfaction?

Most folks complain – to their friends, to their family, to their co-workers. Some will yell and I do mean yell – lose their composure – at store personnel or at a customer service representative over the telephone. Few take time to complain to the organization that dissatisfied them. Some keep it to themselves and let the occurrence eat away at them, increasing their stress; and fewer of them complain effectively. And, when you failed to gain the satisfaction you wanted, you were even more dissatisfied.

You did not complain effectively and, more importantly, you did not complain effectively to the right people. Most employees in most organizations have to follow the rules and must say no to your request for yes. Individual employees cannot make individual rules to resolve individual complaints; organizations need broad, consistent operating rules that cover the majority of situations. But every organization has a few people who have the authority, the experience, and hopefully the judgment to make exceptions. You need to understand therefore what to do and how to do it and to whom to send it to obtain the satisfaction you want.

I want to help you learn how to complain effectively. Actually, I want to help you complain more effectively. Please note: you are not doing this to vent; you are not doing this to force a company to compensate you out of fear of embarrassment, negative publicity, or simply the time it takes to deal with a complainant. You are doing it because you strongly believe something went wrong and you want the company leadership to know about it and to remedy it. In a larger sense, if done correctly, complaining helps an organization improve itself. Good organizations are committed to the process of continual improvement, and need your feedback and that of others to continue to improve. Good CEOs lead such good organizations and value your feedback if given appropriately, informatively, and politely. What better way to improve than to obtain feedback from end users like you?

CHAPTER TWO

My previous history with complain letters

Where it all began for me

I was either fourteen or fifteen years old [I don’t remember any more] and we were living in Stamford, Connecticut in the mid-1960s. My mother bought a raisin pound cake from a well-known and highly-regarded American baked goods company, and she served us each a slice for dessert. This was a real treat – for we only had dessert once a week and it was good. As luck would have it, I found what I thought was a wooden match stick [without the match head] in my slice. I showed it to my father, who said, well, write the company a letter.

I assume he figured I would say yes but I’d forget about it. Nope. I had taken a typing class that previous summer and I wanted to show off my new skills; I wrote to the address on the container. I explained that we had dessert once a week, and we all looked forward to it. This one particular time there was this wooden match stick in the batter which I enclosed. I suggested – as a teenager no less – that perhaps the company president should check quality control at the bakery and make sure that the company’s bakers weren’t smoking on the job [and tossing the match sticks into the batter].

About a week later I received a wonderful written response from the corporate offices explaining that my find was a raisin stem that somehow survived the process of separating raisins from the stems; perhaps that was true and perhaps it was a match stick! Nonetheless, the letter noted the CEO felt badly, and that evening a nice young man in his 20s showed up at our house with several different dessert products the company produced by way of apology.

I wrote a brief, polite, to the point letter, and the company – a great American success story – to its great credit responded appropriately. By the way, what a great job! He said he had a partner, and they had southern Fairfield County, Connecticut as their area of responsibility to call on such letter writers at their homes to give away Sara Lee product [and products of other companies that they also represented] when something had gone awry. Apparently, they tested the products more than occasionally before taking them to dissatisfied customers; he seemed a rather happy fellow 30165.png . I don’t remember the guidance counselors at Rippowam High School telling us about that option on career day!

On the other hand, in April 2012 my wife and I returned to the Des Moines International Airport from a brief trip to Connecticut. As we were waiting for our suitcase at baggage claim, I heard – everyone in the cavernous baggage claim area heard – a passenger from our flight yelling at a baggage claim staffer of a large American air carrier, the sole airline baggage employee in a small, regional airport. Apparently he was mad at the airline for not sending him from Chicago [where our flight originated] to his desired destination – Hartford, Connecticut. Instead, something went wrong, and he boarded – the airline put him on – a flight for his home airport, Des Moines.

Who knows who was at fault, but what good did it do him to yell at a young woman who was covering the baggage claim area in Des Moines? If he really wanted to get to Hartford, the solution to his problem was in Chicago where he was and from where that airline flew regularly and frequently to Hartford, not in Des Moines, an airport so small that it was served by the company’s affiliate flying so-called commuter jets and not the main company with its full-sized passenger jets. And why yell at a young woman who neither was responsible for the problem nor could not provide a solution? [To her credit, she called for the airline’s station master at the airport in Des Moines to speak with the irate passenger, but, he was wrong, wrong, wrong.]

And, while on the subject, one needs to learn to fight in one’s weight class. Don’t yell at an entry level staffer because, frankly, she or he is available and has to be polite despite your misdirected rage. Don’t yell at a secretary or a desk clerk or any similar person. It won’t move you to resolution of the issue. It only proves you are a boor and a bully. And, in many organizations, you would have lost your chance for a resolution to your issue by such boorish behavior.

Your grandmother was right … you’ll catch more