The Letter

Everything was going fine last week. The sky was blue, the wind was warm and all was right with the world...until "the letter" arrived. Sarah had fixed her first wet coconut cake topped with whipped creme and coconut shavings, of course, and we had just received our first shipment of movies from Blockbuster's online service (comparable to Netflix). We sat down to relax, watch a movie and eat some cake, which turned out pretty darn good for a first effort.

I started to go through my mail, which in itself is pretty odd considering I usually wait until I have a stack of unopened letters about 10 inches high before I even think about checking them. The reason for this is because I have all of my bills automatically deducted from my bank account so all the mail I do receive is usually junk. Anyway, one handwritten letter caught my eye and I opened it first. Upon doing this I discovered that it wasn't a letter from a friend or typical wedding invitation, but instead it was a notice from a company indicating I owed them $130.00. I think I went from zero to bitch in about 0.2 seconds after reading this. Let me back up a couple of years so that you'll understand the depth of my rage for this insulting piece of paper I now held in my hands.

In the summer of 2003 my home air conditioning unit rolled over and died. This was right at the end of July and let me tell you, it gets quite toasty in Tennessee during the summer. I made the standard arrangements with my home warranty company to have someone come out and repair it. Problem solved...or so I thought. After numerous missed appointments and supposedly installing our A/C unit at the wrong house our assigned service technicians finally made the requested repairs...two and a half months later! Yes, it was mid-October before our A/C unit was in working order again, exactly at the point when it was getting too cold to use it anymore that year. I couldn't believe how lousy this company was but I had to use them to be covered under our home warranty.

Now fast forward nearly two years to 2005. The letter I'm holding says that I have 15 days to pay the lame-ass service technicians who replaced our A/C unit in 2003 $130.00 for recovery and haul off fees or the price will increase by 25%. This was the first time I'd heard about this so naturally I was a little pissed off (okay, I was furious). They also sent me an invoice for work completed that I had never seen or signed, which just about sent me over the edge. Now I can understand if they have legitimate fees that they need to collect, but waiting two years to ask for it...honestly!

Normally I can forgive one or two small mistakes from a company but now the gloves were off, this was WAR damnit! I immediately contacted the Better Business Bureau only to discover that the company has already had numerous complaints concerning issues of this exact nature filed against them. Needless to say, within the hour I was busily writing my own "letter" in response to the aforementioned company.

It has been remarked that I have the "pissed-off customer" mentality down perfectly. Yep, the president of their company is gonna have someone to hate tonight. I'm still waiting on a response from them, but if I come home tomorrow and find my home A/C unit missing I think I know where I'll be pointing my finger first.