We have been flooded with emails, comments, questions and some great feedback from all of you. Thank you so much for participating in our conversation. With all the questions that we have been receiving and answering individually, we decided to post some of the more popular ones. Here’s our first one:

What are the most common mistakes people make when they write complaint letters?

Mistake #1: Angry letters don’t work.  Nobody likes to deal with someone “screaming” at them… even in print.

Mistake #2: The writer doesn’t clearly state the problem, or how they want to be compensated for their troubles.

Mistake #3: The letter fails to make a “human connection;” the best complaint letters express disappointment… they’re personal.

To give our readers an opportunity of a sneak preview of How To Complain For Fun And Profit, we have made available a free download of one of our favorite chapters - Living in a Sitcom. Click on the image below to begin downloading the pdf file. Enjoy.

(pdf download - 2.4mb)

I wrote this book because I’m basically a lazy guy.

Almost all my family, friends and business colleagues know that I have a strong sense of right and wrong… that I tend to root for the underdog… and that when something doesn’t turn out the way it’s supposed to, I get upset and want to do something about it.

They also know that I write complaint letters, and that my letters nearly always work.

So whenever something bad would happen to THEM, they’d ask me to write a complaint letter for them. And I’d always do it. (After all, how do you say “no” to your kids? Your close friends? Your employees? Your boss?)

As a result, I found myself writing at least one complaint letter a week for somebody or other. One week I agreed to write six of them!

I finally decided it would be easier to teach people how to write their own effective complaint letters than to do it for them. Hence the book.

When my friend Mario called one day and said “Hey, how about selling your “How to Complain” book on the internet,” I jumped at it. After all, part of the title is (and always was) “… for fun and PROFIT!”

I also figured it would be great to create a “Community of Complainers;” an online site where people from all over the world could post complaints and possibly get good ideas about how to “get back at ‘em.” So we’ve created this blog to do just that.

So fire away!

Bruce “Mr. Indignity” Silverman