Why I am Doing This

So Why Am I Doing This?

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I Want the Consumer to Have a Say I decided to set up this site to share some of my "consumer experiences" with you. They might help you, they might entertain you, they might just bore you to tears.
Maybe Victor has a point? (You better believe it!) Most of us are brought up to be polite, and to be grateful for what we have. We accept all sorts of stuff that's really not in our interests - it's inbred! For example, let's say we go to a restaurant and order a nice big juicy steak. When it arrives it's a charred blackened beef-flavoured crisp that wouldn't choke a gnat. We look at it and we say to our friends at the table "Look at that.. I can't eat that!" Various other expressions of disgust are exchanged and then the waiter comes over, "Is everything all right with your meal sir?" "What? Em... er... yes it's lovely thanks" That polite upbringing that our mummies and daddies are so proud of, beats us every time. No matter how indignant we are, we hardly ever take that up with the cause of the problem... the restaurant or the retailer or the service provider. So they get away with it! Not just once, but time and again!
The Story Behind My Site I used to work for a local Council. No, wait! Before you say "What does he know about Customer Service?" let me say this: There are a lot of people working in public offices who are trying really hard to provide the services they are supposed to. There are also, unfortunately, some who don't. I spent every day dealing with complaints and requests, in among the other projects and tasks I was supposed to do. I must have dealt with thousands of complaints when I worked there. I remember only two: the first was a guy who wrote a lovely ten-verse poem about how he had parked his car, and came back to find a parking ticket fixed to it. His poem explained why he had parked there, why the sign was wrong, and why he didn't think he should pay. We all laughed. His charge was waived. The second was a man who wrote a very funny playlet objecting to his neighbour's planning application. Why do I remember those two? Because we laughed, they were passed around, photocopied, pinned to notice boards etc. That was 15 years ago, but I still remember. They were therefore effective. My Contributions None of this really bothered me until about 10 years ago. Then my local Council wrote to me because a neighbour had complained that my 4 year old son had damaged a hedge. I wasn't very happy but "didn't want to make a fuss". A few years after that I flipped. The same Council came along and decimated a woodland area behind my house, and then tried to ignore my requests for an explanation. I remembered my experiences in the (different!) Council and decided to attract attention, and so wrote my first letter in that style, as you can read later. The transformation in their attitude was so amazing that I would advocate anyone to give it a try. Since then I have written in the same style to others, and I have put a few examples on this site, hopefully for your entertainment!			We pretend to be like this....
			when we really feel like this...