Customer Reviews

Wilber Winkle Has a Complaint

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Wilbur Winkle is the voice of disgruntled customers worldwide. How many times have we been dissatisfied with how major corporations handle their customers? Wilbur Winkle shows us time and again that the real heros of American society are the everyday people.

One of the better books of this genre and suprisingly intelligent and witty. Winkle tackles targets that legitmately annoy him (and us, his readers) and doesn't give up until he gets a satisfactory resolution to his complaints. For some authors in this genre, simply getting an answer to a stupid letter is the punchline. Not so for Winkle, who demands real answers to his complaints. It's his targets' own unwillingness to co-operate that makes them look foolish (and reveals their real attitude toward consumers) and this provides much of the humor for the book.

This is less a "prank" letter book than it is a manual on the art of effective consumer complaining, but this doesn't detract at all from its laugh-out-loud humor. Winkle is an odd and wonderful mixture of consumer crusader and merry prankster.

Recently, I've been reading a lot of the prank letter books that have been released. From Ted L. Nancy, to Paul Rosa, and others.

Wilber Winkle was one of the last in the series I picked up. To be honest, after a couple of lesser books, I thought the genre was dead. It isn't. Wilber Winkle is actually one of the best, up there with Nancy, only more serious.

The thing that is so good about this is that the letters seem more real. They aren't jokey like some of the others. So, they are taken more seriously.

And, even better, he continues his quest with several letters, even at times sending money orders to make his letter stand out (and help with researching the questions he asked).

His letters to Hershey's over several years to find out why they left out the almond in the Fifth Avenue bar are wonderful. He continues on and on, even sending Christmas greetings to them asking how their project is going.

Also, he becoomes a pen pal with Ronald McDonald himself!!

Great stuff.

I only wish there was another volume, or it was longer.

Complain!com REVIEW: Some light relief. The real life escapades of John Homans posing as the ever reasonable and intelligent (sic) Wilber Winkle. The stars of the book are the idiot responses that Wilber evokes from real companies. My favorite is Wilber's letter to the head of Comcast cable complaining about his neighbor who is stealing cable service. - Priscilla

Wilber writes letters that everyone can identify with. At some point we all wanted to write a letter to a company and make a point... OUR point. Wilber just takes it a little "more to the edge" :)

I enjoyed this book so much that I decided to become president of his fan club. The letters I enjoyed the most were those trying to get a pet gorilla on Carnival Cruise Lines and trying to get free soda refills for the entire family at Wendy's. This book provides hours of fun for everyone.

Unlike Letters From A Nut, this book focuses on the individual companies that Wilbur writes to. This makes the letters that much funnier. The legal response to his claim to creating the Blue M&M is worth the price of the book. Recommended.

I enjoyed the "Letters from a Nut" series of books. But this book is even better. The author not only writes with his strange requests/questions, but he continues to reply over and over. It's almost unbelieveable how some of his letters are responded to. He puts a lot of thought into his letters, making them outright hilarious. Letter's from a Nut is good, but Wilber Winkle is great!

I laughed so hard at some of the letters written in this book and the responses from some of America's biggest companies. I actually bought another (used) copy because I had lent mine out to so many people and it finally did not come back. This is full of laughs and it is clean family humor.

This is one of the most delightful and humorous books I've ever read. Wilber Winkle has his pulse on some of the most outrageous consumer issues that are so "Americana."