Son of the Squeaky Wheel

Mr. Way, 

Thank you for contacting Häagen-Dazs® customer service. Your comments are crucial to us as we work to serve you better. It seems you had a bad experience at our Nanuet Mall location, and if you’ll grant me the opportunity, I’d like to address your concerns. 

It is most important to clarify up front that Häagen-Dazs® regards its customers as valued friends, and not as “disposable cash spigots with an intelligence somewhere between zombies and arugula,” as your letter suggests. Our service workers are trained in customer appreciation and interpersonal communication, not “the dark arts.” 

We believe that our gourmet ice cream, an award winning delicacy by the way, is fairly and competitively priced. It is certainly not, as you put forward, “the single most costly substance on the face of the earth,” nor does it taste “like frozen dairy case scrapings from Pathmark.” We have taste test data suggesting otherwise. 

In regard to our serving sizes, you declare in your letter that our single scoop serving is “so small Smurfs could only see it with the aid of lab equipment.” Our serving sizes have been determined with a variety of diets and lifestyles in mind. They are hardly “the biggest ripoff since the invention of the mail-in rebate.” 

You also question our practice of weighing each serving of ice cream on a market scale, calling it “offensive,” “galling,” and “an act of war.” This measure was added to our service procedure in an attempt to guarantee customer satisfaction, and not to “mock the very principles of capitalism.” 

Our decision not to make napkins available except on request relates to cost efficiency and environmental concerns, not “a hatred of all that is good.” Incidentally, the policy was implemented by our V.P. of Marketing David Ritterbush, and not by “a cadre of miserable, penny-pinching, wraith-like accountants.” 

We strongly believe that Häagen-Dazs® brand ice cream is an affordable and beloved treat, and not “a literal waste product of corporate America distributed in the smallest portions possible at the highest conceivable price.” 

I apologize if you were unimpressed with your visit to our Nanuet location, and I would send you a free sample if I thought it would do any good. However, you made it clear in your letter that “a mere glimpse” of our “hideous logo” would cause you to “convulse and wretch like a naked human in outer space.” The best I can do is to suggest that you try Rum Raisin next time. It’s a very popular flavor.

Sincerely,
Ernest Welles
Häagen-Dazs® Customer Service