{"id":2411,"date":"2009-01-28T09:36:52","date_gmt":"2009-01-28T14:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2009-01-28T09:36:52","modified_gmt":"2009-01-28T14:36:52","slug":"how-to-write-a-complaint-letter-to-an-airline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2009\/01\/28\/how-to-write-a-complaint-letter-to-an-airline\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Write a Complaint Letter to an Airline"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have reproduced, for your education and viewing pleasure, the best airline complaint letter I’ve ever read.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not really one for passing viral things around, but if you’ve not seen this yet, you really ought to give in a read. And yes, it has in fact been confirmed by Virgin Airlines as authentic.\u00c2\u00a0 Behold its glory after the jump.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Dear Mr Branson<\/p>\n

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008<\/p>\n

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.<\/p>\n

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.<\/p>\n

Look at this Richard. Just look at it:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood1\"<\/p>\n

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?<\/p>\n

You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to be the clue hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood2\"<\/p>\n

I know it looks like a baaji but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on offer.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Christmas morning and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re sat their with your final present to open. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big one, and you know what it is. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.<\/p>\n

Only you open the present and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not in there. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your hamster Richard. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your hamster in the box and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not breathing. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood3\"<\/p>\n

Now I know what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re thinking. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re thinking it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.<\/p>\n

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.<\/p>\n

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s baffling presentation:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood4\"<\/p>\n

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.<\/p>\n

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.<\/p>\n

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood5\"<\/p>\n

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood6\"<\/p>\n

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d had enough. I was the hungriest I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.<\/p>\n

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:<\/p>\n

\"virginfood7\"<\/p>\n

Yes! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.<\/p>\n

Richard\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.<\/p>\n

So that was that Richard. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.<\/p>\n

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s knees and begging for sustenance.<\/p>\n

Yours Sincererly<\/p>\n

XXXX<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the very best part?\u00c2\u00a0 The part that shows how effective such a letter can be?\u00c2\u00a0 The author not only got a phone call from Richard Branson (head of all things Virgin) and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The London-based passenger has since received a call from Sir Richard inviting him to come to the airline\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s catering house next month, to help select the food on future Virgin flights. The passenger has not yet confirmed whether he would take up the opportunity.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153While we investigated his complaint seriously, and following Richard Branson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s phone call we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve invited him to our catering house to select the next range of meals and wines we serve on board,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then we can ensure his personal taste is well and truly catered for.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amuse the world *and* help improve things.\u00c2\u00a0 That is the power of a well written complaint letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have reproduced, for your education and viewing pleasure, the best airline complaint letter I’ve ever read.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not really one for passing viral things around, but if you’ve not seen this yet, you really ought to give in a read. And yes, it has in fact been confirmed by Virgin Airlines as authentic.\u00c2\u00a0 Behold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,12],"tags":[34,33,36,37,493,35],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","category-travel","category-uk","tag-airline","tag-complaint","tag-food","tag-letter","tag-travel","tag-virgin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2423,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions\/2423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}