Fun_People Archive
10 Oct
Customer complaint

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 96 10:48:05 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Customer complaint

Forwarded-by: Ninafel@aol.com
Forwarded-by: hall@bss.ENET.dec.com

This one has been around for years, but I doubt many have seen it... it is a
real letter written 25 years ago by a Shell customer to the company's credit
card division...
==========================================
November 1, 1971

Shell Oil Company
Credit Card Division
1703 One Shell Plaza
Houston, TX 77002

Dear Sirs:

I have been a regular customer of the Shell Oil Company for several years
now, and spend approximately $60.00 per month on Shell products.  Until
recently, I have been completely satisfied with the quality of Shell
products and with the service of Shell employees.

Included in my most recent statement from your department was a bill for
$12.00 for a tire which I purchased at the Lowell I Reels Shell station in
McAdenville, North Carolina.  I stopped at this station for gasoline and to
have a timing malfunction corrected.  The gasoline cost $5.15; eight new
plugs cost $9.36; labor on the point cost $2.50.  All well and good.
Earlier in the day I had had a flat tire, which the attendant at the Lowell
I Reels station informed me that he was unable to fix.  He suggested that I
purchase a tire from him in order that I have a spare for the remainder of
my journey to Atlanta.  I told him that I preferred to buy tires from my
home station in Atlanta, but he continued to stress the risk of driving
without a spare.  My reluctance to trade with an unknown dealer, even a
Shell dealer, did not discourage him and finally, as I was leaving, he said
that, out of concern for my safety (my spare was not new) and because I had
made a substantial expenditure at his station, he would make me a special
deal.  He produced the tire ("Hits a good one.  Still has the tits on it.
See them tits.  Hits a twenty dollar tar.")  which I purchased for twelve
dollars and which he installed on the front left side for sixty-five cents.
Fifty miles further down the highway, I had a blowout:

Not a puncture which brought a slow, flapping flat, nor a polite
ladyfinger-firecracker rubberbubble rupture (pop), but a howitzer blowout,
which reared the hood of the car up into my face, a blowout, sir, which tore
a flap of rubber from this "tire" large enough to make soles for both
sandles of a medium-sized hippie.  In a twinkling, then, I was driving down
Interstate 85 at sixty miles per hour on three tires and one rim with rubber
clinging to it in desperate shreds and patches, an instrument, that bent,
revolving, steel-then-rubber-then-steel rim, whose sound can be approximated
by the simultaneous placing of a handful of gravel and a young duck into a
Waring Blender.  The word "careen" does no justice whatever to the movement
that the car then performed.  According to the highway patrolmen's report,
the driver in the adjoining lane, the left lane -- who, incidentally, was
attempting to pass at the time --, ejaculated adrenalin all over the ceiling
of his car.  My own passengers were fused into a featureless quiver in the
key of "G" in the back seat of the car.  The rim was bent; the tits were
gone and you can F--- yourself with a cream cheese dildo if you entertain
for one moment the delusion that I intend to pay the twelve dollars.

Sincerely yours,

Timothy B. Tieslan

TBT
cc:  Lowell I Reels
      Shell Oil Station
      Interstate 85
      McAdenville, North Carolina

© 1996 Peter Langston