Dear Lyle’s Golden Syrup,

How are you? I hope you are well.

Just a quick question as I haven’t got much time today — it’s Pancake Day and my guests are on the way. I assume things are pretty busy for you, too. This must be one of the peak times for golden syrup. I am not sure what the other peak times would be. Maybe winter solstice when people are jonesing for some kind of sugary kick in their heartwarming morning porridge? Something to keep the dark nights (and dark thoughts away)? I don’t know.

(Perhaps you need to come up with your own holiday. Contrive a celebration of syrup. You know, like people always claim Hallmark did with Valentines Day or Mothers Day or Christmas or whatever, I don’t have time to look that up on Wikipedia because I’m very busy but I think you get the idea. You’d want to place it six months away to give yourself a boost in the second half of the year. What’s that from now? The end of August. Hmm, just after the Olympics. Perhaps you could encourage Seb Coe et al to celebrate with you. GOLD medal winners. GOLDen syrup. Seems to be some ‘brand synergy’ there. Don’t mind me, just brainstorming.)

Anyway, back to that question. You’re my go-to brand of syrup and I won’t deny that’s partly because I get a really nostalgic, wartime, air-raid-siren kick from your old tins. Levering the top off of one of those babies sends me to another time. As soon as it pops I feel like I’m temporal philanderer Nicholas Lyndhurst in Goodnight Sweetheart, about to wolf down a couple of spoonfuls of the good stuff then jetting off to the future to pretend to my wife everything’s fine in our relationship and I’m definitely not a) cheating on her with a woman who’s either dead or at the very least old enough to be her grandmother, or b) mentally ill.

But as wonderful as the packaging is* it’s also the cause of my question: why is it that whenever I return to the opened can of syrup, likely a few months later (because your stuff is pretty goddamn intense, right, and while I might mouth off in the pub about the number of tablespoons I can knock back of a night the truth of the matter is that I find it all a bit intimidating, I can do an irregular teaspoon at best, and when you see me chugging ladles on Youtube it’s actually just lightly coloured water thickened a little with cornsyrup) it is inevitably leaking? I do not understand how or why this happens: it is as if the syrup itself has crept up under cover of the closed cupboard’s darkness and attempted an escape. There are telltale streaks on the outside and a perfect circle on the shelf which will stay there forever and eventually cover everything else. The lid no longer fits correctly and any attempt to clean it just spreads the stickiness further. 

Does this happen to other people? Is there a way to fight it? Am I just incompetent? I will accept that. But if it’s a known science issue to do with rising or falling temperature, the contraction of metal, the expansion of liquid under oxygenation or even implausible, immoral time travel I’d love to know because it’d make me feel a little better.

All advice genuinely appreciated,

Stephen

* I know you offer alternative dispensers. I’ve tried your squeezy bottle and it’s magnificent, it really is. It works and shortly my pancakes will be drowning in your viscous magic. But it isn’t the SAME, Lyle’s Golden Syrup. It doesn’t make me feel like I’m using up my rationing book (??) and committing adultery. And that’s all I need.

Briefly because this week will be brief: I am going to New York on Thursday, then on to Boston, LA and San Francisco and will not be back at Consumer Writes HQ until the middle of March. I do not anticipate that interrupting the flow of letters and replies. They might be shorter but apparently America has internet and everything and I’m quite sure I’ll discover new and exciting things to complain about in an exceptionally British way. 

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[Last minute EMERGENCY COMPLAINT replacement for a more playful letter to someone else]

Dear Southern Railway,

How are you? I hope you are well.

I’m not sure when you’ll read this but I’m certain you’ll already have had your fill of sarcastic letters / tweets / etc. for the day so I’ll get straight to the point. 

I took the 1649 from Brighton to London Victoria on the 17th of February 2012. It arrived at least half an hour late. I’ve placed a claim under your snappily-named “Delay Repay” scheme. I believe that entitles me to 50% of the cost of the return ticket to Brighton (£10.50) and my extension from Clapham to Victoria (£2.80). I’ve filled in your online form for both and I look forward to receiving a cheque sometime soon. It will be like Christmas. Admin Christmas.

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Listen! What’s that whoop-whoop sound in the back of your head? Is it… It is! It’s the Consumer Writes Team Interaction Alert! Mobilize! 

I sent a letter in the post to the elusive Converse about the quality of their shoes. I didn’t get a response so I emailed their parent company, Nike, who replied immediately and CCd Converse. I was about to chase that when this arrived…

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[Previously: Dear Phillips, Phillips Respond]

Hi Carrie!

Thank you for getting back to me. I’ll do my best to answer your questions!

You ask why I haven’t reported this to you before. You didn’t ask for an autobiography but I’m not very good at ‘concise’ and I have a bit of time so forgive me if I go on a bit.

You know how life is full of slightly annoying things and slightly unsatisfactory products? Until recently I understood that it is easier to tolerate these than to complain and head off into the unpredictable, draining maelstrom of a returns process. That doesn’t mean the problems stop being annoying. It just means you swallow the irritation, a bitter pill that grazes your throat but you assume will eventually be gone, and you get on with your life. I could live with always being slightly annoyed, or at least I thought so.

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I wrote to Philips explaining that when I buy an alarm clock I value its ability to keep time. They ignored me, perhaps because they were busy firing everyone in their manufacturing department for making clocks that don’t keep time, and then sent me a survey asking me to rate their customer service department. After another week of silence I chased them up and then, last week, I finally received an email from “Carrie”…

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What’s Going On Wednesday, where we chase up answers from the slower Customer Service departments, has been so successful recently that there isn’t much to chase. I’m expecting responses from PURE and Waitrose within the month and there’ll be news about Converse, Heinz and Philips over the next couple of days. It’s a little early to approach Apple again which leaves Cellapod. I’m not sure we should ever expect a response from them (or Apple, for different reasons), but that won’t stop me trying one more time…

Dear Cellapod,

How are you? I hope you are well and definitely not dead.

I just thought I’d write to you to remind you about the problems I had with my Cellapod armband. You haven’t acknowledged the issues or receipt of my letter which, as far as I can see, can only mean one of a few things:

1) You are dead (hope not)

2) My emails, as suspected, are going straight to a virtual nowhere, which is a efficient (but slightly rude) way to deal with the thorny problem of customer service

3) You’ve received my complaints and you’re still working out how best to deal with them, either because you’re waiting for an official response from your manufacturer or because Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

4) You’ve received my complaints but you don’t much care because you’ve taken my money and you know you’re not going to regain my trust. Fair point!

I’m not sure there’s much else to say so let’s leave it at that. I won’t be in touch again* but don’t worry! If you miss my letters you can keep up to date with my other correspondence at http://consumerwrit.es. If you’ve lost my original email you can find it here, read it and reminisce about the good times we used to have together.

All the best,

Stephen

* Not through Amazon, at least, and you’re a pretty elusive company! But never say never! Maybe I will see you on Bebo.

Dear Old El Paso,

(By which I mean “Dear ‘Old El Paso’”, not “Dear Old ‘El Paso’”, which sounds a little bit sympathetic or even patronising and I don’t wish to get our relationship off to a bad start.)

How are you? I hope you are well.

I bought a stand and server Taco kit and when I opened it the tacos were smashed into a thousand pieces.

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The longest letter I’ve written to anyone was this 2000 word epic to Heinz (with associated pictures and YouTube video). It received a polite but suspiciously template-esque reply from Christine from Heinz which I responded to immediately. They offered no reply and, after nudging them again last Wednesday, I was readying myself for further consumer writing this week. I had a plan!

But then this arrived this morning…

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Last week was a breakthrough week for Consumer Writes. Our most popular post ever, Dear Apple, received a massive 7 ‘notes’ and countless* pageviews. The best reply we’ve ever had came in from the magnificent Yorkshire Provender. And we hit 90 Facebook ‘likes’, which means we’re into the 10-9-8-7-6-etc. countdown to when I have to man up and buy a domain. 

So. What can I promise this week? SO MUCH.

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