Sweet and Sour
 
 
 
 
May 18: Dear Consumer Affairs Department,
 
I am writing to complain about a problem that has bothered me for a long time, and that is the constant reduction of the amount of sugar in Frosted Flakes. I have written repeatedly to Mr. Kellogg as well as Tony the Tiger, but have as yet not received a response. The name of the product these days is extremely misleading - the term 'frosted' implies that the flakes will be enrobed in sugar to the point of being saturated with sugar, which is clearly not the case these days. Something is extremely wrong with this product, and someone needs to do something about it.
 
May 24: Dear Consumer Affairs Department,
 
I am following up on my previous letter of the 18th regarding the gradual morphing of Frosted Flakes into just Flakes, which won't do any good for anyone. I'm sure you folks are very busy, but we Frosted Flakes consumers are consumers too, and we deserve some consumer affairs consideration as well.
 
June 4: Dear Consumer Affairs Department,
 
This is the third time I have written without response or satisfaction. Once again, I am extremely concerned about the level of sugar in Frosted Flakes, which seems to be diminishing by the week - the box I bought last week definitely was less sugary than the box from the week before. Please do something or I will be forced to take this matter up with higher authorities.
 
June 9: Dear Consumer Affairs Department,
 
Thank you (finally!) for your response. I wish I could say I was encouraged by your letter, but in between the insults and general negative attitude, I didn't find too much information about what you are planning to do regarding Frosted Flakes. For your information, I am not 'an old coot who obviously has nothing better to do all day than write annoying letters.' I may be old but I am not a 'coot,' whatever that is. I happen to be gainfully employed, as a matter of fact, but I do take my responsibilities as a consumer quite seriously. And yes, I am the same person who has conducted campaigns on behalf of consumers dissatisfied with Q-tips (not fluffy enough), train tickets (2/7 of a centimeter too big to fit into a standard size wallet), and 'agglomerated coffee' (isn't there a law against using the term 'coffee' to describe this substance?).
 
As to how I manage to have enough time to work a full time job and conduct my consumer rights campaigns, I attribute my great productivity and efficiency to PhaseExpress, a great free program that has been a boon to consumer rights activists around the world - not to mention businesspeople, executives, secretaries, teachers students, or anyone who uses keyboard and screen to communicate.
 
Fighting corporate evildoers, institutional malefactors, and government profligates is hard work, but repetitive - you'd be surprised just how often the sentence 'Expect to hear from our attorneys' crops up in complaint letters. PhaseExpress makes it easy to type lots of letters threatening legal action, because all I have to do to make that whole phrase, and then some, appear, is to type in the word 'sue.'
 
Let's say I send out two dozen letters a day to various no-goodniks who need to be told what's what. If I tried to compose all those letters without the help of PhraseExpress, I'd be typing all those messages, from start to finish, letter by letter. And you now how it works with complaint letters; they usually start out slow, and get better as they go on as you work yourself up into a righteous rage. By the tenth letter, though, your righteousness runs out, and the letter loses something. And then, of course, there are the basic phrases like 'It has come to my attention' or 'Insofar as the party of the first part' that have to be used throughout your correspondence.
 
With PhraseExpress, you can preserve the best lines for posterity by letting you highlight your favorite text and assigning a shortcut - either a word or a keyboard combination, or even both - and storing it on the program's pop-up tray for easy access. PhraseExpress is very flexible - you can paste save phrases by either selecting from the pop-up list, the keyboard combination, or the letter combination you assign the text. You can also group phrases by type, organizing them into folders to be used for each specific type of document you type. Plus, the program can perform all kinds of tricks with macros, automatically install dates, times, etc.
 
And you get an extra added bonus in the newest version of PhraseExpress - an autotext feature to rival the one in Microsoft Word. Unlike Word, though, PhraseExpress lets you automatically complete words and terms in any program on your PC. PhraseExpress is a most formidable weapon in the struggle to ensure consumer rights- or the struggle to get homework done, for that matter. And now, if your curiosity has been satisfied, Consumer Affairs Department correspondents, I suggest you get busy getting to the bottom of the Frosted Flake affair - before I am forced to write more letters to more people with more of the same complaints! Download PhraseExpress for free from http://www.phraseexpress.com. For all Windows systems.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
June 23
2006
 
 
   by
   David Shamah
 
 
 
 
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