If you received yesterday’s infamous response from the BBC, use the opportunity to complain about this response. (here) You will be asked at one point, “What is your reason for contacting us on this issue again?” and then be asked to enter the case reference number.
examples for complaints regarding different aspects of the BBC response (also if your complaint wasn’t about queerbaiting)
This sort of follow-up complaint might get your issue to “stage 2″ (= the Editorial Complaints Unit has to deal with it).
“If you are dissatisfied with your reply at this first stage, you can re-contact us in writing within 20 working days explaining why. You may be able to escalate the issue to stage 2 of the complaints process. If so, we will tell you how to do this in our second response.”
“Please raise only one issue in your complaint – multiple issues can cause delays and other complications in replying.” (BBC)
As seen in their response, “Sherlock” was too multi-layered as an issue and they only adressed the queerbaiting. File new complaints about everything else. P. ex.
normalization of abuse
misrepresentation of mental illness
poor quality (plot holes)
OOC behaviour of John and Sherlock
misogynystic use of female roles as plot devices
queercoding of villans
etc.
If you want to address all of the six examples listed above, file six individual complaints.
b) File your complaint until January 31!
The BBC reports monthly about the complaints they receive within a month. (BBC) There are indications that almost 20,000 complaints were filed online in the first 14 days after TFP aired (certainly not all about Sherlock, though). The highest number of complaints in 2016 was in January with 25,000 complaints. So there’s a good chance we will break the record for 2017 with the impact of the Sherlock complaints. If you want to add your complaint to this statistic peak, make your complaint in the remaining days of January! – The number of complaints about Sherlock will naturally drop down in February and the following months. So do it now!
If the complaints get mentioned in the report about January, that’s something we can asked the media later to pick up on.
love it when we protect the feelings of bigots who can’t stand to see depictions of two men in love, but like, thousands of lgbtq people can literally go fuck themselves. kiss my arse bbc.
this is the rudest shit when are we going to tear them to the ground
THANK YOU I’m so pissed
this is an unacceptable way to respond to a complaint, it was unprofessional and rude and unempathetic and this show deserves to burn
I don’t see how it’s unprofessional and rude though? Just because you don’t like the response doesn’t mean it’s rude.
accusing a complainant of using a form letter is unprofessional. it takes fewer words to say that they received several complaints of the same nature, and moreover to assert that is spiteful and reflects an appalling lack of the qualities that should be sought for someone WORKING in customer complaints. “we do not accept the allegations” is also just…not how you should respond to a customer complaint. it’s important to validate the concern of someone who is dissatisfied with your product and if you can do nothing to solve the problem, to apologize. i’m a vocal complainer to companies that fuck up and this is the first time that i myself have been blamed for my grievances. even if they are my fault, you don’t write that in a letter responding to a complaint.
Them making a point how several of the responses seem to be along the same lines doesn’t sound rude to me. They made an observation. Is that an attack? Not really.
The allegations also, I’m guessing, is of queerbaiting. I haven’t watched the most recent season of Sherlock, since I’ve been busy with psychology work and my RP blogs, but I hadn’t gotten much in the vibe of “I wanna be with you” between John and Sherlock. So… the idea of it being queerbaiting to me is pretty farfetched reaching in my mind.
Also, they did say they’d register your complaint, meaning take it into account.
Overall, it doesn’t feel rude to me.
they absolutely did not have to accuse me of using a form letter. they could have left that out and the substance would have been the same, especially because i wrote my complaint myself. i guess subtext is up to interpretation but i’m not the only one who sees it and mark gatiss has admitted that he likes “playing” with “homoerotic” subtext. and if they knew that, they didn’t have to state outright that it was “never” there because it really, really was, and even the creators admit it.
I do not see them as accusing you specifically of having done a form letter with your message. But yes, that part could have been left about, you are correct.
Maybe they are unaware of him having said that? I’ve never heard of anything along those lines being said that anyone enjoys doing. So, this could be ignorance on their part, if it was really said. Could you provide a link to where this had been said?
Where had the creators also admitted to having put subtext for a relationship between Sherlock and John? If you can, could you provide a link to where this has been stated?
i’m on mobile but you can check out @skulls-and-tea and there is also a youtube series explaining it in detail.
@thetakubooty they also sent this exact same response to people who did not complain about Johnlock. They sent it to people complaining about media coverage, representation of women, queer coding villains and even bad ACD references. Rude or not it’s just horrible PR response
Ok, story time:
I work for a game company. Because I am bilingual I sit in on interviews and I screen applications – even when they are not for the art department (which is where I work).
We were hiring a community manager / customer service person once, and one of the tests was “How would you reply to [this complaint]?”
One of the answers was something to the effect of “Dear [user], I see you didn’t like [thing], but we here at [place] liked it very much. We can’t please everyone, but we try to do our best”
This person was screened out of our recruitment in a second, because that was already considered too rude. Not necessarily because of the content, but because of the phrasing. Customer service NEEDS to use diplomatic phrasings.
If the BBC response was an application to Customer Service, it wouldn’t even be looked at. It is attrociously written. And they do know how to write answers, because Gareth-the-CS-guy answered in a way that you would expect.
My guess is: this was not written by a CS person. This was written by the production or with the influence of the production. If this was a CS person, they’d be fired.
Sherlock Fandom Archive 