Customer Story: The Man Who Bought Forty Pointers
Every so often a customer writes to us with a story so remarkable that we ask permission to publish it. This is not one of those. It is, however, a real letter from a regular customer, whom we will call Mr Haddock, and we have published it anyway because it is the only one that arrived this month.
The letter
Dear Red Dot Supply Company, I am writing to thank you for the pointer I bought in March. I am also writing to thank you for the pointers I bought in April, May, and the second half of June. I now own forty, and I believe this is too many.
Mr Haddock explains that his cat, a grey female named Governor, became suspicious of the first pointer within a week. “She worked out that the dot always came from my hand,” he writes. “She stopped looking at the dot and began looking at my hand. Then she began looking at my face.”
The escalation
By the second pointer, Mr Haddock tried hiding the device inside a book. Governor found the book. By the sixth, he attached a pointer to a ceiling fan. Governor learned the fan. By the fifteenth, he purchased a pointer with a different colour beam, and Governor, in his words, “gave me a look I have only ever seen on a bank manager.”
He admits that by the fortieth pointer, the game had changed. He was no longer trying to entertain the cat. He was trying to avoid her.
What our team found
We sent our Head of Quality Assurance, Pinpoint, to investigate. Pinpoint spent three days in the Haddock household. His report is two lines long and the second line says “Nap taken.” The first line reads: “The cat is not bored. The cat is waiting for him to run out.”
The resolution
We have refunded Mr Haddock for thirty nine pointers and kept the fortieth, because it was already in Pinpoint’s bed. We sent a handwritten card, a bag of treats, and a sincere recommendation that he try a piece of string.
Mr Haddock has since written to say that he and Governor now spend their evenings in companionable silence. He says it is the closest he has ever felt to her. We say it is the best advert we have never made.
