After sending off my complaint to Kellogg's last week I never really expected to get a reply, but when I returned home on saturday night there was a letter waiting for me - a letter with the Kellogg's logo clearly stamped on the envelope.
I tore it open and there it was: a coupon for £3 worth of Kellogg's products. Three pounds! That's almost enough to buy two whole packs of coco-pops bars, when all that I was missing was half of a single bar. My faith in the power of the consumer was restored - perhaps the age when corporations could stamp over the rights of the customer was coming to an end. Then I read the accompanying letter and things got a bit confusing.
Dear Mr Turner
I was very sorry to learn that you had a complaint concerning Kellogg's Coco Popops Cereal Milk Bar and thank you for contacting us.
So far so good...
Our technical staff have examined the specimen you sent us...
Eh? As far as I was aware I had eaten the evidence, and I certainly didn't send them anything.
...and they tell me that it is a rodent dropping.
It's a what?
The letter goes on to assure me that the presence of the dropping is nothing to do with their manufacturing processes and they can't possibly explain how it got in there, but they're giving me the voucher anyway - presumably as hush-money.
So what's going on? Has my case got mixed up with someone else's? Is there an unfortunate customer out there somewhere who, as he was merrily chomping on his Coco Pop Cereal and Milk Bar, was suddenly confronted with a nugget of rat poo? And to make matters worse Kellogg's have written back with the letter intended for me saying 'since you ate the evidence there's really nothing we can do, these things happen'? Poor soul.
Or perhaps this is just standard procedure; they get so many complaints about unexplained appearances of rat-faeces that rather than hire a team of experts to analyse each case individually it's cheaper just to assume every compliant is about poo, and send out the same response to them all.
Either way I suppose I should count myself lucky. Though I have to admit I'm now slightly less eager to spend my voucher on Coco Pops Cereal and Milk Bars. Bars made up entirely of little brown pellets...
Oh dear.
