This is what happens when your Art Director has a bad day. They draft nastygrams on their friend's behalf. This particular example is all about an international package that had too many adventures:
Dear Mr. [Muckety-muck],
While I am quite appreciative of your staff's well-intentioned attempts at assisting me with locating a wayward package, my gratitude is, at the moment, overshadowed by my ire at the gross incompetence shown by your company in its attempts to deliver my package.
Perhaps erroneously, I had thought that [Shipper] being a world-renowned delivery service, was in the business of taking packages from one place, and sending them to their intended destinations in a timely and reasonable manner. Since [Shipper] is a company of global scope, surely there must have been precedent for doing this correctly across oceans and between continents.
But apparently this was optimistic of me.
Technorati Tags: incompetent shipping companies, nastygrams, one really riled AD, ow
Might I suggest that you refer the staff of [Shipper] Express to a decent atlas? Please, once in hand, direct their attention to the North American continent. You will notice that Toronto and Los Angeles are separated by many thousands of miles. This is usually quite acceptable to all concerned -- except that Los Angeles was the destination, not Toronto. Now, while British Airways might have indeed sent the package back from Toronto, in their supposed role as colluders in this scenario; the fault cannot be entirely theirs, as British Airways does manage to send planes to Los Angeles International Airport on occasion. Surely one of their planes bound southward would have been a better choice?
But then we turn to the shipping manifest, which in the best of all possible worlds, informs both [Shipper] and myself of the package's whereabouts. In all fairness, it might well be that the diabolical layout of Heathrow is to blame for the routing error. But in the manifest's alternate reality, my package arrived in Los Angeles, scant miles away from its destination, only to then be sent to The Great White North of Canada, and then back to the UK. While this is quite a fantastic tale, it seems far more likely that the package has been languishing in the inexorable black hole of Heathrow all this time.
I am most anxious to know when I might expect the delivery of my package in this particular reality. I was happy to pay for what should have been a prompt and accurate international shipment, but this is quite unreasonable. I required the package to be in my hands on the 18th of July, and now that has been rendered a physical impossibility. While your staff is certainly pleasant enough, my previous inquiries about my package's whereabouts have been answered with information that was at best inaccurate, if not deliberately misleading. As your company has won numerous awards for focusing on its customers, I would hope that the incompetent service I received from your international express division is an isolated case. I expect a full and prompt refund of the shipping charges as remedy. As well, of course, my package.
Yours,
_____
I so love writing these.