A story is told about am executive that was traveling and checked into a high class hotel like the Marriott. He had stayed with this chain of hotels and had always had excellent service and had received a nice, clean room. As he was preparing to go to bed this night, he noticed that there were a couple of large roaches running up the side of the wall. Since he was tired and didn't want to raise a fuss, he decided to write the hotel chain a letter of complaint when he returned home, which he did.
In a few days, he received a very nice letter from their customer service department apologizing about his stay and assuring him that what had happened was not company policy. It also stated that he should not have accepted the room, but should have asked for another room.
He happened to look again into the envelop and noticed a small piece of paper in the envelop. On that small piece of paper, was written "Please send this joker the bug letter".
For years, I would write to politicians and businesses when I had a problem with their products or services. I was ignorant enough to believe that writing letters to the politicians would/could influence their approach to political problems. Being from Texas, I wrote several to my US senators Phil Gramm, K. Bailey Huchinson, and John Cornyn. I also wrote several to our governor Rick Perry, Lt. Gov Dewhurst, and the local state senator and representative. Most of them used the standard "bug letter", while Governor Perry had a different approach--his was to forward my letter to someone else so they could provide their version of their "bug letter". The topics of these letters included inputs on the insurance rip-offs here in Texas, possible changes to medical costs, a method for curbing spam, a method for curbing the cost of the postal system, the invasion of privacy required by one of the pension plans filing forms, and others. The bottom line for dealing with most politicians is that they are to busy worrying about getting re-elected to worry about what any lowly taxpayer has to say.
Dealing with business is an entirely different game. For years, writing to the American Airlines customer service would get a reasonable response and sometimes even action. During the last few years, they seem to be more interested in saving a few dollars than what their customers thoughts. My experience writing to Delta was a waste of time. Writing to customer service at LaQuinta didn't even merit an answer. Fedex is about the same as LaQuinta. Most of industry doesn't really care if you are a happy customer or not, until they lose a lot of business.
While still employed with IBM, I attempted to try to convince the corporate executives to take a product that IBM had call Prodigy that could have been the "AOL" of the US if marketed and supported. In this culture, the executive seemed to check your level in the company, or if you were from IBM research. Then they would make a determination as to whether any idea was worth considering. If one of those 2 characteristics wasn't met, then the standard "some other executive is evaluating bug" letter was sent. In this case, nothing was done, Prodigy died, and AOL has been a big success.
So you won't think I am totally crazy, let me share a couple of the ideas that I have pushed and received either "bug letters" or stupid answers. While standing in line at the post office and listening to the clerk ask a customer which stamp they would like, it dawned on me that if a sponsor could advertisement or put their logo on a set of stamps, they would pay for that advertising. I've pushed this idea for over 10 years, and even received a "DUMB" response from some postal executive that the method of selecting what/who was honored on the stamps was a time honored and revered "Tradition" in the US Postal Community. I have to believe that McDonalds or Pepsi would pay a very tidy sum for that honor.
I also had an idea on how to curb SPAM. The idea was the people sending the SPAM are just delivering a message. The company or identity paying for the SPAM is the organization that is benefiting from the SPAM. The idea was to set up a "DO NOT SPAM" list just like the telephone "DO NOT CALL" list, and then not worry about who was sending the SPAM, but to penalize any advertiser that sent SPAM to anyone on the "DO NOT SPAM" list. Most legitimate companies would honor the list rather than being fined. The idea is not perfect, but the "DO NOT CALL" list has worked rather well.
The other idea was how to attack the problem of spyware. The thought was that if someone comes into your home or residence uninvited, then they are guilty of trespassing. My thoughts were that if spyware was installed on your computer, the party responsible for that installation and the benefactor of that spyware should also be charged with trespassing since they were entering your home or computer uninvited and against your will.
In both of the last 2 cases, I received the typical political "BUG" letter that some committee was looking into the problem or some bill had been introduced, which in government language means that NOTHING is going to be done.
The bottom line is that if you have a problem or believe in a cause, then continue to write letters to both politicians and companies, but don't expect anything more than a "bug Letter".
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