>It costs no more to write a nice letter like this one than a mean one as is the standard
when the letter includes a literal offer to transfer cash to its recipient to cover their redesign costs. So yes, it does cost more than any other type of letter :)
It still sounds pretty good.
I had my manager escalate to half the world, but we only did it to get their attention as it literally stopped the Australian side of the business cold - it was an existential threat to our business, and I wasn't about to let it happen. However, once the development team started working on the issue (with upper management on their case), I deliberately ratcheted down the pressure.
I did this by stopping all emails from being cc'ed to managers, and I acknowledged that the team working on the project were under pressure but that my only goal was to get a fix and frankly I wasn't interested in blame, only a result. When I took out the managers from the email I also told the devs that I appreciated their work, and from this point I'd work with them cooperatively, and that I would give them space to deal with the problem without constant distractions from managers asking for updates.
The dev team worked on the issue and fixed it a few hours before the start of the business day and I verified the fix. Then I sent an email to their team acknowledging the fix, and the effort they had put into it - only at this point I copied all the orginal managers to the email.
Yesterday I discovered the dev team had done a review of every case I'd ever opened to them, found some additional problems which they fixed without me asking, and then ensured all open cases got a status update and were being actively worked on.
You capture more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. And I felt pretty good!
The sad thing is that a lot of people demand an aggressive lawyer and some even brand themselves this way, especially on TV ("we'll _fight_ for you!") so you end up with lots of "attack dog" lawyers, sadly.
