Comments on: How not to complain about your trip http://www.elliott.org/blog/how-not-to-complain-about-your-trip/ Consumer advocate Christopher Elliott's site. Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:25:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Paul Motter http://www.elliott.org/blog/how-not-to-complain-about-your-trip/comment-page-1/#comment-1817 Paul Motter Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:45:07 +0000 http://beta.elliott.org/photos/how-not-to-complain-about-your-trip/#comment-1817 Great article Chris! As editor of online cruise guide CruiseMates.com I also get copied on all kinds of complaint letters. You touched on this, but did not say it implicitly... Do NOT go into excruciating detail about every little thing you didn't like, such as your eggs were cold, you had to get your own fork - and the Maitre D' gave you a RUDE LOOK! You won't be compensated for rude looks. Stick to the complaint that requires compensation. What happened and what it cost you. These companies put effort into solving problems because they want to keep you as customers. Proving you are already a lost cause to them is about as dumb as it gets if you really want compensation. Great article Chris! As editor of online cruise guide CruiseMates.com I also get copied on all kinds of complaint letters. You touched on this, but did not say it implicitly…

Do NOT go into excruciating detail about every little thing you didn’t like, such as your eggs were cold, you had to get your own fork – and the Maitre D’ gave you a RUDE LOOK!

You won’t be compensated for rude looks. Stick to the complaint that requires compensation. What happened and what it cost you.

These companies put effort into solving problems because they want to keep you as customers. Proving you are already a lost cause to them is about as dumb as it gets if you really want compensation.

]]> By: Chris Zimmel http://www.elliott.org/blog/how-not-to-complain-about-your-trip/comment-page-1/#comment-1816 Chris Zimmel Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:30:40 +0000 http://beta.elliott.org/photos/how-not-to-complain-about-your-trip/#comment-1816 Excellent advice and one more point that was successful for me - list the facts in bullet points. As you said, a long diatribe is likely to be ignored because it takes so long to wade through. I wrote all of the key points in a bulleted list and asked for my frequent flyer miles to be refunded (it was a FF flight). I received half of them back (37, 500 of the 75,000) as one half of the trip was fine. That was a fair settlement and sure beat the 1000 mile refund and a ticket for a meal that I was offered by the supervisor onsite! Excellent advice and one more point that was successful for me – list the facts in bullet points. As you said, a long diatribe is likely to be ignored because it takes so long to wade through. I wrote all of the key points in a bulleted list and asked for my frequent flyer miles to be refunded (it was a FF flight). I received half of them back (37, 500 of the 75,000) as one half of the trip was fine. That was a fair settlement and sure beat the 1000 mile refund and a ticket for a meal that I was offered by the supervisor onsite!

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