How to Complain for Fun and Profit

March 4, 2009— -- Kelly Dean makes money dressing up as LuLu the Clown, entertaining kids with balloon animals and magic tricks at parties in New York City.

Because scheduling those parties is complicated, she wanted a BlackBerry PDA to keep her business organized. So she went to a T-Mobile store, where a clerk talked her out of a BlackBerry.

Tune in March 13 for a special hour with John Stossel: "Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull."

"The lady kind of convinced me to get this T-Mobile Dash. She spoke very highly of it, said it was a really good phone, that it's got all the things that I want, which it did. But it also doesn't work," Dean told ABC News.

Among the problems: The phone doesn't ring; it only vibrates when a call comes in, which caused Dean to lose jobs. And even more annoying, the alarm won't shut up.

"The alarm would go off at all hours of the night, wake me up at 6 o'clock in the morning, 6:02, 6:07, like every two minutes throughout the entire day," Dean said. "The only way to make the phone stop was to turn it off, which is ridiculous, because I need my phone."

Eventually the store gave her a replacement Dash, but it had the same problem.

"Four days after I got it, the alarm started going off again," she said.

When you think you've been ripped off, what do you do? Scream? Call and complain? Or just take it? Maybe there's a better idea.

Bruce Silverman, author of "How to Complain for Fun and Profit," suggests writing a letter to the boss of the company.

"Most companies actually want to do the right thing. Most companies care about consumers. That's how they stay in business," Silverman said.

He says when he complains, he nearly always succeeds. He sends complaint letters to the CEO. ABC News correspondent John Stossel asked Silverman if the CEOs really read the letters.

"I don't actually believe that the CEO of a big company usually reads the letter. But I think their assistants will. And assistants in big companies like that have immense power. They can pick up the phone and call somebody and say 'take care of this,'" Silverman said.

To test Silverman's claim, "20/20" posted notices on various Web sites, looking for unhappy consumers who wanted to go on television.

That's how "20/20" met Dean and four other folks, all of whom had tried and failed to resolve their knotty consumer complaints on their own.

Silverman debriefed the group and helped them compose letters he believed would get results.

Frustrated consumers often just take the loss, said Silverman.

"They spend time on the phone or they may go back to a store or something. They don't get satisfaction and they finally throw up their hands," he said.

Silverman spent many years writing advertisements for big companies such as American Express, Hershey's and Shell. One day, a family member asked him to write a complaint letter. He did and he found it worked. Now he does it all the time.

How to Write an Effective Complaint Letter

Stossel asked Silverman how to write a complaint letter that gets results.

"You should send a letter, not an e-mail, a real letter. It should be typed. It should look like a business piece of communication," Silverman said.

"Altogether too many people try e-mailing. And e-mails get nothing. Because they're lost in the swarm of e-mails that go in to the CEO and they just get ignored. But something that shows up in a letter, in an envelope, with a stamp, in today's world, that's unusual."

"When they do write, consumers often write the wrong thing?" Stossel asked.

"Yes. Most of the time people write a letter and they start a letter by in essence being angry. By complaining, by whining. 'You're a terrible company.' Well, if you were having a conversation with a human being, that wouldn't work. So what I always advise is a system I use called 'Praising With Faint Damn.' I start the letters by saying, 'I have a relationship with your company. I have been a customer of your company. I like your company. And you've let me down.' And it's amazing how that will work."

After Silverman wrote the letters for "20/20's" consumers, they sent the letters to the companies without any indication that an expert had helped write them. Silverman incorporated the techniques he uses in his own complaint letters.

"When you write good letters, one of the tricks is to bold or underline something that you really want to catch someone's eye. Because the eye will go there first. One of my little rules of writing letters is to put a headline on it. So that every letter, there's a story. And that will make somebody say, 'I should read this.'"

For Dean's cell phone complaint, Silverman's headline was "RING RING, BUZZ BUZZ, HELP HELP."

Spell Out the Compensation You Deserve

Silverman sums up his rules this way: "When you're going to write a letter, write to the top dog. That's the person who really can respond. Second, be very clear about what happened to you. Third, ask for the order. Tell them exactly what you want them to do for you. It's what a good salesman does. Don't say, 'I want compensation.' Tell them what you want that compensation to be. And if you've really been jacked around, ask for something extra, you're entitled."

When Silverman met with Dean, she explained that calling T-Mobile's customer service had gotten her nowhere. As Silverman wrote her letter, he thought Dean should get something extra from the company and shouldn't be shy about asking for it.

"You should get something for your troubles," Silverman told Dean. "So what do you think would be fair?"

Dean thought getting a discount on her phone bill would be fair. So for her troubles, her letter asked T-Mobile for a month of free service in addition to an exchange for the BlackBerry she originally wanted. And she was pleasantly surprised a few weeks later when the CEO's assistant called her. He offered her a free month's service, a deep discount on a new Blackberry and he let her keep her old phone.

To see whether Silverman's letters worked for the other frustrated consumers, watch "20/20" Friday at 10 p.m. ET.