Monday 13 December 2004

Pot Noodle™ potty

This is a letter I wrote today. Perhaps I have too much time on my hands. I await the response eagerly:


Consumer Care Department
Unilever Bestfoods UK
Brooke House
Crawley
RH10 9RQ

Dear Sir/Madam,

On Saturday 13 December 2004, at approximately 5.03 and 53 seconds of the post meridian, Greenwich Mean Time, I purchased an 89g Pot Noodle™ Snack (Chicken & Mushroom flavour) from my local Sainbury's supermarket in the Westgate Centre, Oxford city centre, Oxfordshire, England (store address: 21 Westgate, Oxford, OX1 1NX). Please find the lid enclosed. I wish to complain about the quality of the product. I think that, given the current crisis of obesity in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and in the Western world as a whole, this is a problem that you should address with some alacrity.

First of all, I found the food snack located on the lowest shelf on the eastern side of the third aisle from the right, on the half nearest to the check-out payment facilities, but in the middle of the shop floor, by the central aisle. I think a food snack product of this nature should always be placed on the top shelf, especially given your recent pornography-themed advertising campaign, which I found of profoundly questionable taste and propriety. Perhaps you might encourage your retailers to place it next to other illicit supermarket products such as the wines, spirits, cigarettes, and chocolate digestive biscuits?

Secondly, I do not think that you place adequate warning on your packaging as to the 89g Pot Noodle™ Snack's contents. It is a fatty food and, if I may be frank here, it's too gorgeous!

I hope that you address my concerns with the utmost urgency, despite the time of year, taking them to the very highest level of your organisation, and beyond, if necessary. I expect to see an improvement within 72 hours of your receiving my letter. If I find no clear evidence of this, I shall be forced to contact my local Member of the House of Parliament, Westminster, London, with regard to the complaint. I may even draw it to the attention of Ms Diddums-Smythe, who lives next door, and who is Chair Person of my local Neighbourhood Watch Scheme (registered number available on request). Should she react to the news badly - and she has been very frail since she spent two weeks in hospital after she took that fall on her annual holiday in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, England - she may have a heart attack. Should this eventuality occur, I would be inclined to contact my legal representative and may press charges on you for negligence in the line of duty to what is right and proper.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Whalen, Esq.

P.S. I am writing under a pseudonym to protect my statutory rights. You will still reach me if you use the name and address that I have declared at the top of this letter [removed in this posting - Ed.], but for legal purposes (as you may be hearing from me about Ms Diddums-Smythe in the future), my real name and address is Angry From, Esq., and I live in Tunbridge Wells.

1 comment:

  1. The pornographic website in question can be found here:
    http://www.potnoodle.com/disclaimer.asp?r=%2Fdefault%2Easp

    Maybe I shouldn't have bothered to use a pseudonym if I gave them my real name at the end of the letter. Who's this "Ed" chap, by the way? I can't remember giving him membership rights to my blog. I've noticed he seems to write for an awful lot of magazines.

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