"Leanaí cúthail agus milseáin"

Last week, I shared a story about getting a pizza with erroneous cooking instructions and the ensuing consequences.

When my compensatory pizza carried the same typographical error on the packaging, it seems that I forgot everything that I had learnt from my first experience, leading to another ruined evening.

I immediately whinged to customer care. The gist of my e-mail was as follows:

Dear Professor Oetker,

My pizza told me to cook it at ninety degrees. My oven only goes as low as 110. Undeterred, I set the oven to where 90 degrees looked to be and left the pizza for 25 minutes.

I'm not even sure if the oven turned on, but either way, the pizza was ruined, and my girlfriend was so pissed at me that she wouldn't put out.

Understandably, this has ruined my life, and I demand compensation for my lack of intelligence.

Kind regards, 

Sully

Things didn't quite go the same as last time. There was no immediate reply. Four business days was all it took for the hoard of vouchers to arrive last time, and that time had already passed. I had given up hope until the fifth day, when the good Doctor had returned my letter.

It was pretty standard fare, but the gist of it was:

Dear Sully, 

Thank you for your vaguely plausible story about a simple packaging error causing your entire life to crumble around you and forcing you into celibacy. Please accept this voucher for free pizza as a reward for successfully typing our e-mail address into the To field of your bullshit e-mail.

We hope it will be the first step towards you turning your life around, a life that surely revolves around eating junk-food and finding things to complain about. 

Your specious complaint will be kept on file, and any further specious complaints will be checked against your name and address to dissuade you from bullshitting us again.

Wishing you'd get off the couch and go fuck yourself,

Alphonus P. Oetker, PHD. 

My experiences of dealing with customer service has reminded me of that old Irish saying: "The shy baby gets no sweets, but the aggravating son of a bitch gets free pizza". (It loses something in the translation).

I'm four pizzas up from two e-mails (only one of which I sent myself). Do any readers have any experiences of whinging at customer service over minor infractions in the hopes of scoring free stuff?