Do You Complain?

I just sent a complaint letter email to a local ice cream place. Over a four dollar ice cream.

To say that I feel somewhat petty about this would be like saying that ice cream is mildly delicious.

And yet, at the same time, they did mess up. We ordered peanut butter cup and we got almond joy instead. And the almond joy had large chunks in it. Ice cream is supposed to be a treat and this was decidedly not a treat. This was an exercise in frustration in frozen dessert format. We were left with a general feeling of this place that was distinctly lacking in positive emotions.

And yet… it’s just ice cream.

And yet… if I was the ice cream store owner or manager, I would want to know. We go to this ice cream stand fairly often. We know that they’re normally delicious. We know that they don’t usually screw up the flavors. Someone else might not have a past history of deliciosity to keep them coming back. If I went to an ice cream place and was given the wrong flavor and then discovered that said wrong flavor was full of ice?

I would probably take my ice cream business elsewhere.

So, yeah, I felt that it would sortof be a courtesy to let the ice cream powers that be know that we were less than satisfied with their service and with their product. It was a decidedly difficult email to write. It’s hard to get emotionally invested in ice cream. I felt petty. But I also felt like that it was something that I should have been writing. So I kept writing. And I sent it. Maybe we’ll get some free ice cream out of it. Maybe they’ll let their staff know that they need to be more careful. Maybe I’ll get filtered into their spam box. Maybe they’ll dismiss me as an ice-cream loving crank.

I still mostly feel like I did the right thing.

Would you have sent a letter?