I write dozens of letters every year. Letters of complaint. Letters of praise. I have done it all my life. When I was younger, I almost always received replies from companies and people. I have letters from luminaries like Marcia Davenport*, Mary Rodgers, Luci Arnaz, among others, as well as replies from dozens of leading companies. But things changed in recent years. For one thing companies and people don't want to be found. It's very difficult to locate people in the computer age. Companies rarely show their addresses, and you can't even contact them unless your sign in with an e-mail and password. And I can't imagine how celebrities get fan mail when it is impossible to locate them. If you do get the address, you are very unlikely to receive a reply. In the past three years, I have written at least three letters to Starbucks, both of praise and complaint. No response. My solution to this problem, which does not please me, is to no longer include a return address since I will not receive a reply anyway. Thus I can always convince myself the person or company I wrote to would have replied if they only knew who I was.
*Marcia Davenport for those who don't her was an American author and music critic. She was the daughter of opera singer Alma Gluck and later the stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist and
stepsister to actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Among her many accomplishments were two bestselling novels:
My Brother's Keeper and
Valley of Decision.
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