From me to Professor Michael Scott (NEWI)
I sent a letter of complaint to Professor Michael Scott of NEWI on 27th April 2005. Unfortunately I'd made a mistake on one of the pages where I'd typed the name of the wrong person, so I wrote a further letter (15th May 2005) making clear my amendment. The letter you can download here is the corrected version of the letter.

From me to Deborah Bradley (University of Wales)
I CC'd the above letter of complaint to Deborah Bradley of the University of Wales. This is the cover letter that went with the copy.

From Deborah Bradley (University of Wales) to Me
Deborah Bradley replied within a couple of days with this very nice response.

From me to Professor Michael Scott (NEWI)
After three weeks without even an acknowledgement from Professor Scott, I wrote this letter to try to chase up what was happening.

From Professor Michael Scott (NEWI) to Me
After my prod, Professor Scott did reply to say he had recieved the letters and that they were being taken care of.

From Professor Michael Scott (NEWI) to Me
Five days later, Professor Scott replied again informing me that it would not be himself giving the full response, but Sion Hughes, Academic Director of Art, Design and Humanities at NEWI.

From Sion Hughes (NEWI) to Me
This is Sion Hughes' response to my complaint. Notice that he does not answer a single one of the questions from my original letter, and dismisses the entire complaint as being an unfortunate misperception on my part. He goes further to say that it is my fault for not complaining properly at the time. Read it - it's priceless.

From me to Professor Michael Scott (NEWI)
This is my response to Sion Hughes' offical reply. It is directed toward Professor Scott, as I don't wish Sion Hughes to be involved, certainly if he's going to write what he wrote.

From me to Deborah Bradley (University of Wales)
I CC'd the above response to Deborah Bradley of the University of Wales. This is the cover letter that went with the copy.

From Deborah Bradley (University of Wales) to Me
Deborah responded quickly explaining what I might expect from this point forth.

From Shelagh Gibson (NEWI) to Me
Shelagh Gibson, on behalf of Professor Michael Scott, responded with this letter. The matter is now in the hands of Liz Royle, Academic Registrar. As of yet we have heard nothing from Liz. Another letter will be going out very shortly.

Two months later...
As we hadn't heard anything from NEWI for two whole months, I decided to forgo the letter and telephone Liz Royle herself in order to see how my complaint was progressing. I didn't actually make the telephone call, Dave did, but essentially this is what happened... (no transcription obviously, but all the salient points)

Liz began by assuring us that she had sent a response, and in return we assured her that we had not received one. At one point Liz even intoned that Dave must be lying, as she most definitely sent it and it couldn't possibly have gotten lost in the post. She remembered that the response she sent essentially agreed with Sion Hughes' response, and that there were no clear facts that she could investigate. She said she would go away and find a copy of her reply and ring back.

Liz rang back a little later. It turned out that she could find no evidence of her letter and that she must have forgotten to reply. No apology for intoning that we'd lied, no explanation of her phantom memory of the reply.

The rest of the telephone conversation consisted of Liz Royle being flipant and dismissive of the entire complaint. Whenever specific points were brought to her attention she would dismiss them as trivial and difficult to investigate. Her attitude was generally appalling.

As the conversation (maybe forty minutes or more?) progressed, she seemed to realise that she couldn't continue with her attitude and maintain any credibility. She even acknowledged her earlier flippant remarks and apologised for them. Her attitude remained one of unsympathy, but at least she stopped talking to Dave as though he was an imbecile (he's not ;)).

Then, near the end of the whole affair, she suddenly asked who Dave was. His reply - that he was my partner - was met with a concerned: "Oh, I thought you were his Dad or something, I thought you were someone close to him". An amazing statement that even she realised should never have left her lips. Her hurried obsequious apologies were quite amusing.

Eventually, very much in order to rid herself of the hassle of the whole affair, she offered to quickly write an apology letter and send it to me. She seemed glad to go once the conversation was over. The whole thing was typical of the attitude so far received from NEWI, one of disinterest and denial.

From Liz Royle (NEWI) to Me
This is the letter of apology that was eventually received. Had it not been sent simply to placate me and had arrived months before it did, it might actually have meaning. It is at least consistent with the NEWI experience.

From Sue Nelson (NEWI) to Me
Out of the blue I received this email from Sue Nelson, the new Director of Marketing and Business Development. I was intrigued as to her motives, and planned to reply as soon as I could. I was rather busy though, so my reply took a while...

From me to Sue Nelson (NEWI)
I was still interested in discussing the problem, so I let Sue know and suggested we meet at some point.

From Sue Nelson (NEWI) to Me
Well... Sue replied... Unbelievable.

From me to Sue Nelson (NEWI)
I just thought I'd set the record straight. This really needs to be laid to rest.