“I wish to register a complaint!”

Recently I had to assist my Dad in writing a letter of complaint to a particular company regarding a product he had bought. Despite him attempting to return the product he was still being charged for something that he wasn’t using and hadn’t actually wanted in the first place. It’s complicated and I won’t name the company but we found that on searching the company’s website last year, there was no email address to complain and the only ways to communicate with them was through writing a letter and sending it through the post or phoning the company which, on the one occasion he did phone them, cost around £7 and it was only a short call and didn’t solve the problem.

Eventually, after several months, we found that there was an email address available to which the query could be sent. I set to work constructing an email to send to the company, it took around an hour to write the huge mail containing all of the necessary information and explaining the anxiety this had caused. This got me thinking about the nature of complaint.

It’s not often that I feel the need to complain to companies, TV shows or people but I do find myself saying “There’ll be letters!” at certain things on the TV as I have the expectation that people will hit Twitter, Facebook, the internet in general to air their grievances against particular things. I would say generally that very little on the TV offends me, occasionally I might think something is inappropriate for the time of day etc but on the whole I don’t feel the urge to write an email/post a message if something offends me. Perhaps my desire to complain is directly correlated to the amount of energy and time I think it will take to write the complaint or how much money it will cost to complain (phone call costs, price of a stamp etc). A scientist could probably construct an equation in which this could be expressed but I more than likely wouldn’t understand it and would have to have it explained to me.

For example, I believe it was last year that I was watching the X Factor, it was probably the final as I only ever seem to get around to watching reality shows at the Final – apart from Masterchef, I really like Masterchef. Anyway, the Christina Aguilera performance with the burlesque dancers was on and I looked up from whatever I was doing and my first thought was ‘That’s quite raunchy for this time of night!’. For anyone who didn’t see it, it mainly consisted of scantily clad women generally writhing around, thrusting their hips and straddling chairs. Perhaps I’m doing it a disservice; it was quite enjoyable and sensual but maybe more of an adult nature. The outfits weren’t really the problem, you could see women in lingerie on billboards, shop posters etc, it was more the sexual nature of the dancing really. I remember thinking ‘Ooh, there’ll be letters!’ as I thought of someone reaching for the Basildon Bond and their best fountain pen after spluttering over their cup of tea (I’m not sure why I get this image in my head to express someone being offended!). The thing is that, there were letters, or rather emails I suspect to the X Factor expressing outrage – I understand that the complaints reached into the thousands. Now, I have to admit that I did think it was perhaps a tad raunchy for pre-watershed viewing and I’m not exactly a prude but what did I do about my offended sensibilities?

Nothing, absolutely nothing – unless you count saying to my husband ‘There’ll be letters’.

The funny thing is, despite being mildly shocked, I still continued to watch said performance – whether it was to see if it got any worse or if it was just because I couldn’t stop watching it, like watching a terrible drama unfolding I literally couldn’t tear my eyes away. I didn’t switch it off – why? I’ve asked myself this question, maybe I wanted more to complain about mentally or to say that I had seen it (although it was undoubtedly going to end up on YouTube) some part of me wanted to have seen it when it happened, a spectator to what was probably going to be causing some outrage on Twitter even as I watched. Is this human nature or am I a damaged individual? Actually, don’t answer that :) Perhaps if I had kids and they were watching it I may have felt more outraged at their exposure to a performance like that but I would have probably switched it off or sent the kids out of the room until it was over. This is an area I will address if and when it ever occurs I suppose.

In the olden days, complaining seemed to involve writing a letter to the necessary party, expressing extreme offence to the material (or as Hugh Laurie in ‘A Bit of Fry and Laurie’ once said “I'm going to write a stiff letter. A very stiff letter. On cardboard. And I shall post it too! ” ). There was, and still is I believe a show on TV where viewers would write in about various programs and complain and their letters were read out on the TV. I often wondered to where you would write if you took offence to something in the complaints program. Answers on a postcard please...

Anyway, my point is that, being so enraged by something on TV, you could go and write a letter and post it to the relevant party and then you had to wait for a reply. The interesting thing about this is that, apart from the actual writing of the letter, there is very little instant gratification in this - having your complaint recognised and acknowledged by the party – there is a wait. I mean, the fact that you are so annoyed by something that you put pen to paper, it must be serious – right? Now, with the birth of the internet and social networking sites it is possible to complain almost immediately to whomever you choose without the, probably advisable, cooling off period. We are passionate creatures us humans and, judging by the responses on internet forums of varying natures, some people perhaps don’t cool off and calm down before they send a potentially inflammatory remark without thinking. With the internet and social networking sites there is a sense of instant gratification – if you don’t like a TV show you can often post a message on the site of the show, the director, the actors etc and frequently get a response quickly; even if the response isn’t from the person themselves, a like minded individual responding seems instant gratification enough at times. To know you’re not alone in your thinking.

I suppose in the modern age we are used to having more power and control than we used to. In the past, when complaining by letter you didn’t know how many other people had complained or if the person didn’t reply you didn’t know if your complaint had been read or if anything had come of it and you could pursue it further but let’s be honest, most people may have thought about their complaint and considered it not worth the time and energy to continue it at that point. Also, when you wrote a letter of complaint it wasn’t immediately mocked or supported by lots of other people, whipping people up into a frenzy. Nowadays we are encouraged to vote for people online/by phone, vote people off reality tv shows, wherever you are, whatever your opinion – we want to hear from you!

There are billions of people in the world and it’s fairly likely that every individual will have an individual opinion on everything. In the past, it was perhaps more difficult to get opinions across to large amounts of people, now everyone who has access to the internet has a voice. Everyone should have their say, free speech and all that, and most people do but with instant posting on social networking sites it is all too easy to make a throwaway comment or create something that can create an enormous amount of controversy.

An example of this is the song ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black. You know, the YouTube sensation? I hadn’t heard it but from the comments I had read about it I half expected some sort of song about something hugely offensive with an accompanying horrific video. Some people were praising it, which is nice, but there were a large amount of people who tore into her – one allegedly suggesting she should harm herself and die! To be honest, I was almost afraid to view the video as my expectations were terrifying. I really have no idea why the video produced so much vitriol, to me it just seemed like a pop video by a young girl singing about how she was looking forward to the weekend and that she was waiting for the bus. I thought I had viewed the wrong video. In my humble opinion dear reader, it wasn’t the greatest song or video I have ever heard or seen but it was certainly catchy. I can’t imagine feeling so irate by the song that I would email or tweet the singer to express such bitterness towards her. People put allsorts of stuff up on You Tube, surely that’s the point of it – to express yourself to the world. Obviously not everyone is going to agree with the opinions expressed by everyone but to personally attack a girl for wanting to be in a pop video and show the world seems a tad harsh. What gives someone the right to publicly insult a young girl for doing something she wanted to do that seemed fairly harmless. Did I miss something? Did she do something heinous?

But then again, everyone has an opinion and should be able to express it so perhaps it was just people expressing their opinion – there’s probably no need to be overtly cruel though.

One set of complaints that actually surprised me recently was the flurry of complaints over Fiona Bruce reading the news with a pair of glasses on. As a fellow bespectacled girlie I know how sucky it is when you want to wear your contact lenses but have an eye infection so you have to wear glasses, but for people to say that she shouldn’t have been reading the news in her glasses seems so ludicrous! (In my opinion). Admittedly I noticed she was wearing glasses and thought ‘Hmm, does she usually wear glasses?’ but I sort of ignored that and got on with the business of watching the news. Apparently there was a bout of comments on Twitter saying she looked “awful”, criticising her appearance and some saying she should have stayed at home if she was ill. I mean, what do you think about that? So it’s openly ok to criticise someone’s appearance publicly but if that were to go on in other places would it be classed as ‘bullying’?

The thing is, there’s often no happy medium, if you express yourself you risk ridicule but if things are censored or cut out then there is uproar! Our rights are being violated by not allowing us to see something! It’s political correctness gone mad people shout. So what is the solution? There is always someone who is going to take offence at something and perhaps it’s up to us to sit down, consider our complaint, think of the consequences of venting our spleen and if we still feel it is a valid complaint, go ahead and let rip.

As for me, frankly if something on TV offends me I tend to switch it over and watch something else, I’ve got enough to worry about mentally without getting worked up over something that either doesn’t interest me or in the grand scheme of things isn’t that important. If I do find something massively offensive, trust me, I will write a letter, write an email and make my voice heard but until that time comes I will continue my viewing pleasure and I undoubtedly will be caused to utter my well worn phrase ‘There’ll be letters’ :)