When I first concocted the idea of birthing this here little blog, something I thought I would feature is the Letter of Complaint.
I have a conflicted relationship with the Letter of Complaint; I despise them, and the boring, petty assed people that bother writing them, and then I sit around penning them my head.
All day long I sit and compose. Letters to the editor, letters to bureaucratic establishments, letters to the outlandishly over priced op shop, letter to the Midwife Bitch at the hospital, letter to the waitress that served me coffee, letters, letters, letters. I even invent Letters of Complaint in response to peoples actual Letters of Complaint.
But I would never dare actually write them, or worse, send them. Except for here, the place where my letters of complaint have come to die…..
Dear Roads and Traffic Authority,
Your bureaucratic incompetence astounds me. In this, I refer to two matters. Firstly, the failure of your administration system to send me monthly copies of my account, well, monthly.
Instead, long after my e-toll account has ran dry and I’ve traipsed all over the city racking up toll debts as long as my arm, you send me letters stating that my account in so far in the black that I must not only cough up the cash, but I must cover the cost your administration incurred writing up my notice and popping it in the post.
Upon calling your ‘helpline’ to investigate I am immediately informed, via a robot, that September account statements – the one no doubt informing me of my cash strapped account status – will not be sent out until November and that if we wish to know of our account status in the meantime then we can always try employing mental telepathy or some Jason Bourne type covert case cracking investigation.
As a result I now have to pay you the ‘administration’ cost you incurred when you failed to practice any, you know, administration. What exactly are my funds to be used for I wonder, the annual Christmas party you plan to hold inside the M4 toll booth?
The second matter I wish to discuss – so long as my aforementioned funds have covered the cost of your attention so far, is the staggering ineptness of your online services.
Actually, for that matter, your services in general – I mean leats face it, customer service is simply not your strong point, you really should stick to those catchy little driving slogans, you have got that shit sorted. Why ‘Stop. Revive. Survive’ is the kind of genius I couldn’t even match with a rhyming dictionary.
But your website? Your call centre? Absolute shambles.
Because, being the quick leaner that I am (and the utter tight ass that refuses to incur any further administration costs) this time I did in fact indeed practice some stealth like Bourne investigations and by the power Hollywood invested in me, I discovered, one lone and rainy Friday night, that my account had once again hit zero.
In a bid to quickly rectify the situation before further weekend traipsing around the city side, I logged on to top up my account. Ba –Baam. No can do. Because even with my Bourne like skills helping me navigate the muddled mess that is your website, I was still unable to crack that wily ‘enter your details here’ code, as your system repeatedly informed me that I didn’t exist.
Exasperated I called your robot, only to be told that he doesn’t work on the weekends. What was I to do? There was no way of giving you more money until Monday, but surely I couldn’t be expected to sit in my driveway until then? Wrong. Surely I could. Because after driving around, racking up some debts that come hell or high water you would not let me pay, I received another notice from you citing my failure to pay my debts!
Agghhh, no amount of therapy could help me, I screamed and pulled my hair out and kicked the table with my shin causing me to repeat the whole process all over again before sitting down to compose you this nice little letter, in my head.
Thanks a fucking lot.
Yours in Disgust,
RTS
RubyTwoShoes 