How to Complaining in English

Life today can be filled with frustration and boredom. The car gets clamped when you were only away for a few minutes. hotel room for "peaceful, overlooking the ocean, you booked actually looking lively nightclub. Or maybe this is more serious - a dental procedure goes wrong, or find your pension is worth a fraction of what you expected.

To make matters worse, when you call the organization to complain you nowhere. The call handler said that nothing they can do. You can not speak to the manager because she is on leave. They suggest you call next week. When you do, they have no record of complaints. At the same time blood pressure continues to grow ... sound familiar? Time to file a written objection.

There are many reasons people complain - to receive compensation, to vent their anger, or be useful. What? How to complain helpful? So many companies spend thousands of pounds for a market study to find out what customers want and how they are doing compared to the competition. If you complain, you are effectively offering free market research. This enables them to change their product or service to meet the needs of their customers, who ultimately what keeps them in business. Think about your complaint as a gift.

Of course, not all organizations that way ...

So how to ensure that their "gift" does not brush off or ignore? Here are five tips that will help you get the letter, seen and understood.

1. Prepare

Start by writing down the points you want to do - not necessarily in order just yet. They will be your points.

Then put the point in a logical sequence. This may be chronological, order of importance but often works better as grabs the reader's attention. Always start with a brief sentence explaining the purpose of your letter (I am writing to complain about the quality of your product / service). Finish with the action you'd expect, including time limits, if necessary (please send me a full refund and a written apology to October 21).
2. Be concise
Get to the point quickly and avoid repetition. If you're rambling on for twenty pages, which will be located as an old windbag, and almost certainly will not get what you want.
Also your sentences and paragraphs short. Your goal is to the reader to understand the message in one reading. Penalty more than 20 words and points in more than 10 lines will dilute your message.

Short does not necessarily mean short. You may need to provide factual information in support of the complaint. Just make sure they are relevant, accurate and included in the relevant paragraph. Avoid "Oh and one more thing ..." syndrome in the letter.

3. Be clear

Write in simple language that most people will understand. Avoid jargon, slang, legal terms and formal words such as "signature" and "circumvention". Imagine talking to your reader face to face. Whether the words sound strange in the context of the conversation? For example, we can write "I ask my policy is terminated immediately", and "please close as my policy is much more effective. .
Free guides in plain English website of the campaign are useful here, particularly from A to Z of alternative words.

4. Be polite

It is tempting to be sarcastic, insulting or witty when you are angry, but that is unlikely to help you get your message across. What will do is alienate the reader and make it more difficult for them to respond positively to your letter.
By all means that you are angry or upset, but always respectful and polite, even if they feel they have not shown you can also courtesy. You can abandon the moral high ground when using insults, and this will weaken your case.

5. Be accurate

When done, print and read the letter. Ideally, get someone else to read it as well. First, check what you wrote actually makes sense and that the facts (names, dates, numbers) are correct. Then go back and check your layout, grammar, spelling and punctuation. Do not rely on spell check or grammarchecker do this for you - common errors are writing "there" instead of "their" or "affect" instead of "effect" will be picked up with editing tools.
Finally, put your letter stamped addressed envelope and post it. Can not you just email it? Yes, but it is much more likely to influence, if you send it by mail. Most companies are still organized to deal with letters, and the fact that you have invested in print shows you are serious. If you want to send it by email and post.

Tweet