The Twelve Days of Christmas - Day Eight

To: customer_service@replicon.com

Date: 20th December 2023

Subject:  Replicator fault

I am losing the will to live!  I waited in all day and your engineer DID NOT CALL!  What kind of service do you call this? 

You HAVE to turn your hellish machine off!

This morning, in addition to the usual array of feathered gits, tedious pear tree and yet another few thousand gallons of freezing water, the eight maids turned up – along with eight Jersey cows - since without them there would be no ‘a-milking’, apparently! 

These malodorous, clod-hopping beasts have just about reduced to splinters anything and everything downstairs that had not already been shat on or submerged.  The maids managed to drive the wretched animals out into the garden (with some difficulty, as our doorways are meant for people not livestock), whereupon they (the cows, not the maids) proceeded to eat or trample underfoot all my wife’s much-loved flowerbeds. 

In the space of a single morning, these appalling bovines have succeeded in reducing the garden to nothing more than a sea of glutinous, manure-tainted mud, so that it now more closely resembles the aftermath of the Somme than a suburban front yard.

My dear lady wife has now had to be referred to the local drug addiction service due to the amount of tranquillisers she has been consuming these last few days.

I have at least managed to contact a local farmer who has agreed to take the cows off my hands, but what on earth am I supposed to do with eight semi-skilled female agricultural workers? 

Words cannot DESCRIBE the level of hatred that is building up in my heart towards you and your accursed company.  I see you have been most careful not to publish the address of your offices anywhere – very wise!  If I knew where to find you, I would come over there with a baseball bat.

Yours truly

Edward Meeks

To: e_meeks@freenet.com

Date: 20th December 2023

Subject:  Re: Replicator fault

Dear Mr Meeks

Our engineer called at you house at 13:00 today, as promised.  He was, however, not able to reach the front door as he was set upon by a gang of uncouth young females (the words he actually used in his report were ‘gaggle of nymphomaniac harpies’).

Replicon Inc. takes the safety of its staff very seriously and unless our engineers can be assured of safe access to your premises, we cannot in good conscience send any more of them to your house.

I appreciate that you are experiencing a great deal of frustration at this time, Mr Meeks, but I would ask you to refrain from the kind of threatening language you used in your last mail.

Yours truly

Gerard Cochrane

Service Manager