S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

I have always enjoyed writing complaint letters. In fact, if the truth be told, I think I have a real penchant for this activity. There are few occasions in life when one gets a chance to use grammatically complex English to convey a simple point, but when those chances arise, I believe it is our responsibility to take them.

It started a long time ago when I was fifteen, still at school. I got stuck on a train just outside Holywood (Northern Ireland) for an hour - there had been no warning, or information given during the delay. Just a silent train sitting there for one hour. Eventually the excuse was given that it was “emergency repairs” - a ridiculous statement, as we were literally seconds outside a station, and should have been given the chance to get off and find alternative means, and I suspect it was not such an emergency that the crew had 20 seconds to get there as the train left Holywood station… anyway, I digress. I wrote a strongly-worded letter to the PR guy at NI Railways, and got a £10 travel voucher. Brilliantly though, the next train I took (using that voucher, ironically) was also delayed by some equally nonsensical fiasco, so I wrote another letter to the same guy saying how this was absolutely outrageous, and got a voucher for £20 that time. A real teenage Victor Meldrew in the making, eh?

Cut to 2007, coming back from Hong Kong in November on a British Airways flight - my entertainment system didn’t work, and I had a one hour baggage delay. The letter, not entirely devoid of outrage and vehement accusation, was duly dispatched.

Just this week, I discovered that Skype had disconnected my SkypeIn number with no warning, so another furious torrent of “justified verbal abuse” landed on them via their email contact form.

This morning, I got a £75 voucher from BA, and 100 Euros of credit plus a new number for a year from Skype. Better than a punch in the teeth, I suppose. My friend Leo Abrahams and I were planning to create a Flash-based “complaint letter generator” using the most elaborate English we could muster… never quite got round to it, but may do this year, as I’ve vowed to have a creative year. Even if what I end up creating is utter nonsense.

Starting with the stop-motion video of the Air tour 2007.