To the management...

Dear Sirs,

Whilst passing through the Focus hardware store in LocalTown the other day, my eye was caught by one of your advertising screens extolling the semi-miraculous cleansing properties of “Product X”. On the strength of this advertisement and with a feeling of ”Oh, well, it’s only five quid, what the heck, it’s worth a shot…” I added a pot of “Product X” to my trolley and proceeded to the checkout.

On arriving at my home, I took said pot of “Product X” into my kitchen and, with a mounting feeling of excitement, set to work upon eliminating the cooked-on food stains from the top of my batchelor-belaboured cooker.

I have to say that your achievement with this product is truly astounding. I do not think I have ever encountered a product that has so completely, so unreservedly, so perfectly failed to live up to any of the claims made for it. This stuff could not clean a bar of soap in a disinfectant factory.

Not only could it not clean off the cooked-on food stains on my cooker, it could not even lift the fat-splashes that had resulted from my most recent fry-up. Quite frankly, I could not have achieved less successful results had I tried to lick the cooker clean with my tongue.

Not wishing to admit defeat, however, I then moved on to attempt to clean those rather bizarre, sticky marks that randomly appear on the bottom of one’s steam iron from time to time for no readily discernible reason. Indeed, the ease with which the miracle-worker in the “Product X” advertisement had cleansed the bottom of their steam-iron was one of the major factors in influencing me in my impulse purchase. Sadly, however, a prolonged period of vigorous scouring achieved no discernible result, beyond the comprehensive clogging of the little steam holes with fine, white powder.

Undeterred, I moved onto the bottom of my extremely expensive, heavy-bottomed frying pan. A few quick swirls of the sponge by the Hogwarts-trained thespian in the advert, a quick scoosh of water, and the bottom of their pan was restored to pristine virginity. Several minutes of determined scrubbing on my part, however, merely served to demonstrate the sad truth that a scrubber and virginity are seldom re-united in the real world.

I must confess that I did then get a certain amount of enjoyment, although not, I feel, a fiver’s-worth, from running around my house to see what else “Product X” would be entirely unable to clean. Certainly my bathroom presented no barrier to its inexhaustible appetite for failure. Gold I do not possess, but I decided to avoid letting it near my silverware just in case an insatiable capacity for completely dissolving silver turned out to be the final twist-in-the-tale added to the mix by the sadistic genius who compounded this Machiavellian product. I only wish that my car had alloy wheels, in order that I could have obtained a more complete set.

In short, Sirs, whilst I am not usually one to complain; whilst I hold to the principle of “caveat emptor”; and whilst I have sympathy with the idea that anyone expecting to be able to buy a product capable of producing super-natural results for less than five pounds really does deserve to be fleeced, I have to say that this particular product is so wholly, so comprehensively and so utterly useless that I really would be grateful to receive your cheque for £4.99 in respect of a refund for my purchase.

Under such circumstances, you would, naturally, be entitled to request that I should return to you the unused portion of my tub of “Product X” which I would be happy to do, although what conceivable reason you should have to do so, or to what earthly use you could put it if I did, is entirely beyond me.

Alternatively, on the other hand, if you feel my criticisms to be unjustified, you would be most welcome to send a member of your staff around to my address to demonstrate exactly where I was going wrong with the utilisation of the product. I suspect, however, that sending a cheque would be cheaper.

I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

M.A.D.