更新: 如果您有兴趣, 可以查看我们找到的英文原文.
堪称投诉信范本
之所以获得“最完美”称号,是因为这封长达6页的投诉信条理清楚,虽言辞犀利但不失礼貌和幽默.为说明问题,发件人还附上多张自拍的机上食物彩色照片与文字配合,堪称投诉信范本.
发件人以“亲爱的布兰森先生”开头,然后告知对方自己乘坐了2008年12月7日由印度孟买飞往英国伦敦的维京大西洋航空公司班机,并表达了对维京航空公司的喜爱,说“尽管过去几年发生过几次让人不悦的事件,但我依然喜爱维京这一品牌”.
接下来,发件人开始讲述问题,抱怨这次航班上供应的食物品质太差,称这次飞行为“烹饪地狱之旅”.他形容期待正餐的自己如同一名在圣诞节的早上等着打开礼物的12岁少年,但在打开正餐加热锡纸的一瞬“顿感窒息”,因为那看上去就像“一块酸果冻上顶着一汪油”,配的芥末足够一个人吃一个月.而随后当作甜点供应的饼干不仅外包装如同“犯罪现场物证收集袋”,而且像是“地下作坊”的产品.
在说明具体情况时,发件人常以问句形式诘问布兰森,并配上“请看图片1”、“请看图片2”等提示,图文并茂地讲述自己的遭遇和感受.
发件人还抱怨机上播放娱乐节目的电视机画质太差,让他头疼.临近结尾,他向布兰森发问:“我惟一的问题是:您如何在这样的条件下生活?”
否认是广告策划
这封投诉信很快在网上传播开来,被有类似经历的人奉为“世界最完美投诉信”.英国《每日电讯报》调查后得知,投诉信作者名叫奥利弗·比尔,现年29岁,住在伦敦,在知名广告公司WCRS任艺术总监,主攻电视广告.
1月29日接受采访时,比尔对投诉信事件略显尴尬,称自己对因此走红网络感到“不舒服”.他还驳斥了这是一场广告策划的说法,说自己写信的初衷仅仅是为了表达对班机上食物的不满,“真的不打算做除此以外的其他事”.
《每日电讯报》还获悉,布兰森方面在较短时间内对投诉信作出反应,亲自给比尔打电话道歉,并邀请他2月前往航空公司供给部门,协助工作人员为今后的航班挑选机上食物和葡萄酒.
Dear Mr Branson,
REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008
I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.
Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.
Look at this Richard. Just look at it:
I know it looks like a baaji but it's in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you'll be fascinated to hear that it wasn't custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.
Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what's on offer.
I'll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it's Christmas morning and you're sat their with your final present to open. It's a big one, and you know what it is. It's that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about. Only you open the present and it's not in there. It's your hamster Richard. It's your hamster in the box and it's not breathing. That's how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this:
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it's more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It's mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.
Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.
By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it's baffling presentation:
It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.
I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.
Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on:
I apologise for the quality of the photo, it's just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson's face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel:
Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I'd had enough. I was the hungriest I'd been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.
My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations:
Yes! It's another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.
Richard. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I'd done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.
So that was that Richard. I didn't eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can't imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.
As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It's just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it's knees and begging for sustenance.
Yours Sincererly,
Oliver Beale