Letters, I Write Letters …(Part 1)

Arlene Blackman Yolles ♦ March 27, 2024 ♦ 3 Comments

I remember watching the Perry Como show and at the end, he sang, “Letters, we get letters, we get lots and lots of letters….” And then he read some and responded.

Well, I’ve been writing letters (both of complaint and praise) for many, many years, to companies and individuals who I thought needed some input.  In the past, I used to get responses, usually by mail, with compensation (if it was an inferior product I was writing about) or, occasionally by phone.  I remember once sending a note to Shorr’s pickles to complain about finding a bug in the jar.  Irwin Shore phoned me and patiently suggested I look at it more carefully.  Sure enough, it was a piece of the pickling spice and not a bug!

Now I get no responses.  Until today which I will come to presently.  Here are a few letters I have written:

To Amazon Drug: my husband buys his meds from Amazon pharmacy and they include 2 pages of “Get Help in Other Languages (23 of them).”  Some of the languages they offer, in addition to the ubiquitous Spanish and Chinese, are: Korean, Tagalog, French Creole, Vietnamese, Somali, Arabic, Romanian, Swahili, Burmese, Nepali, Amharic and Pashtu.  My letter stated: In the 2000 U.S. census, approximately 180,000 reported speaking Yiddish at home.  In addition, After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers.  Neither of these languages is represented on the sheets you sent. How many people in the U.S. speak Pashtu or Somali?  Response? Nothing.

To Boston Market (copied to 3 executives of McDonald’s, who owns them):  When we ordered online, we chose curbside pickup for 6 pm.  The instructions we got were: “Please call the restaurant when you arrive and we’ll bring the food to your car!” Arriving at the restaurant at 6pm, we phoned.  The call was not picked up. My husband got out of the car to go into the restaurant (in which he saw 2 employees run to the rear) to see a sign that said, “Closed.”

We then got on the line of 4 cars for the pickup window.  After 25 minutes, we approached the window and the worker made our order up right then (as opposed to it being ready as we expected for curbside pickup.) When he gave me the bag with the chicken, I asked if it was whole, as ordered, and he assured me it was.

When we got home, we saw that the chicken had been cut up.  Response? Nothing.

Nature Valley Granola Bars: You recently changed the product so it is “easier to bite.”  Who complained about being unable to bite it?? OK, so, yes, you made them softer.  Here’s what’s happened as a result: They make more crumbs on my lap and in my car; they fall apart easier in my purse; they disappear faster in my mouth!

Are those the results you were looking for?  As far as I’m concerned, bring back the original product.  Don’t make the mistake that Coke did when they changed their long-term successful formula!  Response? Nothing.

Finally, I wrote an email last week complaining about a product whose lid was not closed (even though the plastic around it was intact) and was moldy inside.  I got no response.  This morning, I wrote again and threatened to post the photo and the incident on all the social media platforms I use.  Bingo!  I got a response within an hour.