Although we have no guarantees of satisfaction when we lodge a complaint, grumbling pays off frequently enough that it's worth the effort.  People who are chronic whiners deserve to be ignored, but that doesn't mean the rest of us need to be wimps.

Many of us understandably take the view that we cannot "fight city hall" or big corporations.  In the age of telephone menus and auto replies, it seems as if any complaint we have is doomed to be rebuffed by a machine that has as its sole purpose to aggravate us further and then to dismiss us as inconsequential interruptions in the noble process of profit-making.  Corporations and government agencies reinforce this impression by erecting countless barriers between the customer with a problem and the person who can address the problem.

We cannot eliminate these barriers, but we can go around them.  Somewhere there may be a human being with the power and willingness to help us – someone who may have become, in private life, as sick and tired as we are with the charade that passes as customer service.  Reaching such an individual may be a challenge, but it is not impossible.

With the development of electronic communication, the old-fashioned letter ("snail mail") has become the last resort as a way to resolve problems.  But it often works where e-mail and phone calls do not.  The first challenge is to determine to whom the letter must be sent.  A missive addressed to, say, "customer service" will most likely reach some clerk who can and will do no more than file it, discard it, or send a form-letter reply. We must send the letter to the specific department concerned, preferably to a person, addressed by name.  Again, getting the necessary information is difficult, but it can be done.

A case in point is instructive.  I had a specific problem with a major Internet provider and knew that it could not be resolved via e-mail or a call to some clerk at an 800 number.  Nevertheless, I sent an e-mail asking for the name of a person to whom I could write, stating explicitly that I did not want to receive some automated response.  In a pattern well-known to all of us, I received – you guessed it – an automated response.  I replied to this, repeating that an automated response was unacceptable; I wanted the name of someone to write.  Still manning the barricades, they sent me a form letter suggesting that I write to corporate headquarters and giving the address (which I had anyway from the Internet).  I responded with a polite but firm "You just don't get it, do you" message, reminding the sender that a letter to "corporate headquarters" would most likely spend the next few years being bounced from to department to department, if it wasn't lost or trashed along the way.  That got me the address and phone number of a department specifically devoted to trouble-shooting customer complaints (i.e., dealing with stubborn people like me, who would deluge them with e-mail until I got what I asked for).

I did not call the phone number.  I suspected that I would still get only a "gatekeeper" and would probably have to go through long explanations to reach the owner of the "mansion."  Instead, I wrote a carefully phrased letter (more about that later) that would be physically delivered to the mailbox.  In a few days, I received a phone call from the recipient of my letter.  He knew from the letter what the problem was and set about resolving it as well as he could, which was not perfect but better than I expected.  In addition, since I had "gone to all this inconvenience," he authorized a "courtesy credit" to my account.  It wasn't much, but it cut my next month's bill by one-third.

That's what a letter (unlike an e-mail or an 800-number phone call, which is one in thousands) can do.  Of course, it's good to have a well-phrased letter that cites all the details, doesn't sound like the ravings of a crank or chronic complainer, and doesn't contain mistakes that make one appear to be an ignoramus.  The more thoughtful it seems, the more thoughtful the response will be.

This approach to grumbling may seem time-consuming, but it has benefits beyond solving the immediate problem.  The repeated messages leave a paper trail in case we ever need it again.  More importantly, the final contact provides a name, address, and phone number to contact when something else arises with the same company (and it probably will).  These folks always end with, "If you need anything again, please contact me."  Of course, they hope you don't . . . but you can.

Grumblers of the world, unite!  If we all storm the corporate barricades, at least some of them will crumble.