How To Complain

How To Complain (1976) by Christopher Ward ? Pan Books ISBN: 033024650X Condition: Good There are people who suffer silently. There are people who shrug, sigh and accept that the toaster has exploded, the hotel room overlooks a brick wall and the new washing machine appears to have been assembled by somebody working from memory. And then there are people who know how to complain properly. Christopher Ward?s How To Complain is a gloriously practical relic from 1976, dedicated to that most enduring of human activities: being dissatisfied with something and attempting to make somebody else do something about it. This is not, importantly, a book about simply becoming angry. Anybody can do that. True complaining is an art. It requires timing. Evidence. Persistence. The correct tone. And, ideally, the name of somebody slightly more senior than the person currently explaining that ?there?s nothing we can do? Published by Pan Books in the mid-1970s, How To Complain belongs to an age before email, online reviews, live chat, social media and the modern ability to announce to several thousand strangers that your takeaway chips were disappointingly lukewarm. In 1976, dissatisfaction required effort. You had to write a letter. A proper letter. On paper. Possibly using carbon copies. Then you found an envelope. Then a stamp. Then you posted it. And then you waited. People today complain that customer service takes twenty minutes to answer. In 1976, your complaint might spend two days travelling in a sack. This encouraged discipline. If you were going to complain, you made it count. Christopher Ward?s book is effectively a field manual for the consumer who has had enough. Faulty goods. Bad service. Disappointing holidays. Tradesmen. Retailers. Public services. Companies that ignore correspondence. People who promise to telephone and then vanish into administrative mist. The fundamental problems have not changed very much. Only the methods have become faster. The sentence ?I?m afraid that is company policy? was presumably already fully operational in 1976. The genius of a book like this is that complaining sits somewhere between confrontation and bureaucracy. You cannot merely shout. That may be emotionally satisfying, but it often results in security being called. Instead, the successful complainant must remain calm enough to explain precisely what has gone wrong while simultaneously communicating that they have absolutely no intention of disappearing. This is harder than it sounds. Especially when someone has just told you that the faulty refrigerator is behaving ?within normal parameters? Ward guides the reader through the mechanics of making complaints effectively: who to contact, what to say, how to present the facts and when to escalate the matter. The underlying principle remains timeless. Do not rant. Document. A receipt is more powerful than outrage. A date is more useful than indignation. A name is better than ?that woman I spoke to on Tuesday? And a calm letter beginning ?Dear Sir? could, in the right hands, carry the emotional force of a naval bombardment. The 1970s were also an excellent decade in which to publish a book about complaining. Britain was coping with inflation, industrial disputes, shortages, unreliable services and a general sense that somewhere, somehow, something had gone wrong administratively. The consumer movement was becoming more powerful. People were increasingly aware that buying something did not necessarily require accepting whatever happened afterwards. Consumer rights were developing. Organisations were being held to higher standards. And the customer was beginning to discover that ?you?ve bought it now? was not always the end of the discussion. This was revolutionary stuff. Previously, a defective kettle might simply become part of the family. Now there were options. There is something charmingly analogue about the advice from today?s perspective. No screenshots. No online dispute portal. No tracking n.…