Friday, September 19, 2008

Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells gets her comeuppance

I like to giggle. Actually, I like to giggle a lot. It's been one of my favourite hobbies since I was about four, perhaps even more than spotting shopping trolleys. What I don't like however is when I roar with laughter madly on my own in public, which seems to be happening more and more. I'm walking round the supermarket, or like the other day surrounded by teenagers in Body Shop, and I'll remember something that just makes the laughter well up.

Has anyone else noticed how quickly people back away if you laugh in public?

Anyway, an email I received this week is still giving me many such embarrasing moments, so I asked my friend if I could put it up here. She said yes, so long as I didn't use her real name so let's call her Polly Fewmay. Here it is:

Just must tell you - I haven't been working enough lately so am, frankly, more than a little bored. Consequently, I have been doing things like emailing Royal Doulton (I know this is REALLY sad and I do not come out of it well - in fact I sound like an green-ink-wielding looney, which at times is pretty close to the truth...) to complain about a Christening set of china bowl, cup and plate given to my daughter four years ago (not that I told them that) - it's a Winnie the Pooh job featuring both pics of characters and their names and 'Piglet' is spelled on both the bowl and the cup as 'Piglit'. My email, as I say, really was pretty tragic (I could imagine the person reading it thinking, 'Don't some people have anything better to do?' - in my case, no): - a short, sharp job pointing out the meshtake and saying that i'd have thought a co. that prided itself on attention to detail wouldn't have let this sort of typo go to production stage and then charge customers 40 quid for the end result, and did they have any comment to make? Here is the email I got in response -

Madam
Thank you for your enquiry regarding a recent gift. We hope that the following explains the reason for the spelling of Piglet
Piglet is a baby and cannot yet spell his name correctly. When he writes his own name ( and his name appears in handwritten font) he spells it Piglit. However, when his name is written as part of text from the book (in typed font) then it is spelt correctly as Piglet because an adult wrote the book.
We hope that this is of assistance.
Regards
Consumer Enquiries


Oh, I love this so much - both Polly's account of what happened and the completely genius reply. Not least of course because An...Polly is from Tunbridge Wells like me. Do you think there are special 'let's humour the Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' email writers in every company? It makes me think there would be a wonderful book in all the strange replies people get from companies... but surely that would have been written already? I would ask An...Polly to do it with me, but I have plans for her already. She needs to set up a van like the chocolate van but full of cakes, and park it outside my house (it can visit Pierre sometime too, but not Kathryn. She hasn't sent back the chocolate van yet.)

7 comments:

Nik Perring said...

That is absolutely bloody brilliant!

And there was me thinking it was a new genre of novel, one for the farmyard.

Arr.

Nik

jem said...

Thats fantastic. I love their reply. I had a friend who once wrote to a company who made chocolates that had musical notes embossed on them and complained because the notes didn't play a proper tune!

Nik Perring said...

Sarah! I've just read this to my other half and apparently it's true! She says if you look in the books, Piglet, when he's writing, always spells his name 'Piglit'. Who knew?

Nik

roomwithaview said...

I am Polly Fewmay and I was disgusted but now - having read Nick's comment - I'm just a Polly well and truly in her place! I went as far as checking that 'piglit' wasn't a Disneyfied spelling and googled Piglit and Winnie the Pooh - nothing came up so I assumed I was safe! How wrong can a bored woman be?! Thank goodness even I wasn't sad enough to send Customer Services my planned reply, which was going to go something along the caustic lines of pointing out that if we're to believe that all the writing on the china is that of the infant 'piglit', then there's a serious problem because if the creature can't even spell his own name, he sure as hell wouldn't have been able to spell 'on your special Christening Day', (which also appears in 'his' writing). In fact, in 'infant spell' the whole sentence would need to be changed to read 'on yr speshal Kristning day'... Thank GOODNESS it's only you lot who know what a pillock this Polly can be. Oh well, I'm off to put the kettle on...

Nik Perring said...

Polly, you're a star!

Kathryn said...

I haven't finished with the chocolate van yet because it's autumn and if I don't eat loads of chocolate I get a cold. I love the idea of Piglit. I'm thinking of changing my name.

Anonymous said...

It is indeed the case in the book that the young Piglet spells his name Piglit, which was funny to begin with.
Remember Joe Orton! A master of the genre of complaint letters.
xxx, Betty