I'm an inveterate writer of letters (in olden days) and e-mails (in more modern times)to companies. When they make a decision that makes their product less useful, or tasty, or likable, I let them know. These letters go to people called "customer service representatives," or something similar; seldom do they reach the people who really ought to see them (do you suppose someone ever wrote Toyota about an odd experience they'd had with their accelerator, perhaps?).
Judging from the kinds of responses I get, evidently these reps aren't too well paid; and in my estimation, they're seldom worth what pay they get. Another case of "you get what you pay for."
Not long ago, I wrote in this space about some size/quality changes in Evercare lint-rollers and mentioned that apparently a 60-sheet roll had replaced a 70-sheet roll at the same price. I said as far as I could tell, the 70-sheet roll wasn't available any more. Now, I retract that statement: in fact, these rolls are available in more sizes and types than you'd want to know, but to find them, you have to go to the kinds of places they like to hang out.
(Hint: They seem to like to hang out at Target stores, where you can find them in several different aisles, in 60, 70, or 100-sheet sizes; sticky and stickier; professional and amateur, easy-pull and not-so-easy; special ones for pet hair -- the mind boggles.)
But my statement was an honest mistake. When we mentioned on the company website that we didn't like the less-sticky, 60-sheet rolls we found, they sent us some free samples -- of the product we didn't like! Wouldn't you think they would have mentioned that the ones we did like were still available, and maybe even send those?
I suspect they don't even read the letters in most cases. We also told Unilever on line that we had a bottle of their mayonnaise where the seal on the jar lid didn't seem quite right. Was this dangerous?, we asked. We thought it was curious we heard nothing back...until about 10 days later, when we got a snail mail letter in response to our e-mail inquiry. It contained a check for $5, but no answer to the question of food safety. We might be dead or sickened by food poisoning, but hey, at least we got a check!
Unfortunately some of these customer service types seem to graduate into jobs as Congressional staffers. Last year when I wrote to my two Senators about passage of a certain bill, I got a reasonably focused answer from one, but the other seemed to think I was for, rather than against, the legislation and boasted about how he was serving my interests.
We're supposed to accept nowadays that people in low-paying jobs won't perform very well. There was a time when people thought that doing a bad job well could lead to a better job; there was even a time when people in low-level service jobs would do the work well as a matter of pride. But now, like a dimestore barbecue tool whose shank bends cartoonishly under the weight of a steak, customer service reps don't really seem to be fulfilling the function they exist for. Companies may as well not spend the money. (And in fact, some don't.)
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