Please see the attached Word document for the assignment details. You will submit the assignment here 

MARKETING PRINCIPLES

MKTG 305

Complaint Letter Assignment

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Assignment Description:

For this assignment you will complain! Write a formal letter to a company to complain about a poor experience you recently had with the company. This experience can be with either a product or service, but it should be a real experience, please do not make anything up for this assignment. (If for some reason you are unable to come up with anything to complain about then, as an alternative, you can write a letter of praise for an exceptional experience you recently had with a company. However, my preference is for you to complain and you are more likely to get something in return if you do!) Submit your letter to the customer service department (someone higher up is preferable if you can find them, try using Hoover’s in the library for corporate contacts) either through snail mail, e-mail, or through a customer service portal on the company’s website, or using social media. Your complaint should also be simultaneously submitted to Blackboard when it is submitted to the company. As soon as you receive a response, please submit the company’s response to Blackboard as well. If you do not receive any response simply note in Blackboard that you did not receive a response. Have fun with this as you will likely get something out of it!

Sample Letter Text:

On the next page is a complaint e-mail that I sent to the San Bernardino Sun that generated immediate results. I addressed the e-mail to Fred Hamilton who is the President and CEO of the San Bernardino Sun, but I also cc’d other people whom I thought would be relevant, such as the circulation and marketing directors. Thankfully, all of these individuals had e-mail addresses listed on the San Bernardino Sun website.

Dear Mr. Hamilton,

My name is Haakon Brown and I’m a marketing professor at nearby California State University in San Bernardino.  I am writing to you as a courtesy to make you aware of my recent experiences with your publication in the hopes that you can relate these experiences to the appropriate divisions and rectify them before they have a detrimental impact on your circulation.

I moved to the area from Chicago this past August and on Saturday, December 12th a high school student came to my house to offer a sales promotion for your paper.  For $10 I was to receive Saturday and Sunday delivery of the San Bernardino County Sun for 8 weeks.  Since I was new to the area and the promotion offered the potential of a scholarship to the student at my door I decided to sign up.  For the weekends of December 26th/27th and January 2nd/3rd I received proper delivery, but the following weekend that delivery abruptly ceased.  I contacted customer service and made them aware of the situation and was assured it would be taken care of, but it was not and a few additional weeks went by without delivery of any kind.

Then I received a phone call to check on my satisfaction with the paper.  I explained that my delivery had stopped without warning after I had only received the paper for 2 out of the 8 weeks I was originally supposed to receive so that I could not accurately evaluate the paper or service at that point in time.  Still no delivery.  Shortly thereafter I received a bill from your company for 8 additional weeks of service, so once again I called customer service to explain the situation, and once again I was assured that everything would be taken care.  I was very clear with the representative during this conversation that I was still owed 6 weeks of delivery and thus was informed that my account would be credited for the service I did not receive.  That Saturday (at this point already March 13th) I did not receive the paper so I called customer service to report the problem and then received a call from a delivery person and finally a short while later I received the paper and continued to receive it for 2 more weeks.  Then on Sunday, March 28th, no paper could be found.  I called customer service again and used the automated system to report a problem with my delivery that day and nothing happened.  That week I received a bill informing me that my subscription had been stopped due to non-payment and that according to your records my account was past due by $6.75.  According to my records, I have paid for 8 weekends of service, but have only received 4.5, so your publication still owes me 3.5 weekends of service.  To add further insult to my experience I received a phone call last Friday from the Sun offering me another promotion for a year’s subscription to the paper.  I explained my situation to the woman on the phone and was told that she couldn’t do anything about it (although she did sympathize and shared that she heard complaints from many customers who initially signed up for your publication in the same way I did), but still kept trying to sell me the promotion.  Of course there was a catch; in order to sign up for the promotion she offered I would first need to pay $.75 (according to her records this was the amount I owed).  I informed her that although the amount was trivial the principle of the issue was not.  I was and continue to be unwilling to pay additional money for something when I still haven’t received what I initially paid for.

Finally this brings us to today.  17 weeks have passed since I signed up for the promotion and to date I have received 4 weekends and a Saturday’s worth of service.  No doubt you are aware that in today’s economy producing a quality product is simply not enough, excellent customer service is also paramount, especially in an industry that is struggling to keep up with the internet.  From my perspective there appear to be quite a few things that could be improved within the areas of marketing and promotion within your organization and I would be more than happy to discuss them with you should you desire to do so.  At a minimum, however I would like to receive the 3.5 weekends that I am still owed on the original 8 weekends for which I paid.  For your records my account number is 76456233 and the delivery address is 2174 Snowberry Lane, Mentone, CA 92359.  Few customers are willing to offer companies as many opportunities to deliver on their promises as I have offered the San Bernardino County Sun.  I hope that you take the time to ensure that that promise is fulfilled in my case.

Best regards,

Haakon Brown

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Haakon T. Brown, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Marketing

College of Business and Public Administration

California State University, San Bernardino

Jack Brown Hall (JB 409)

5500 University Parkway

San Bernardino, CA 92407-2318

hbrown@csusb.edu

Office:  (909) 537-5716

Fax:      (909) 537-7515