He receives a letter from the president of the railroad apologizing and stating that this has never happened in the history of the railroad. Unfortunately, accidentally clipped to the letter is a note that the president had only intended for his secretary to see. It reads: "Send this guy the bug letter."

No one even gets the courtesy of "the bug letter" these days.

These days, what the consumer mostly gets is neglect. Firestone sells apparently defective tires but refuses to acknowledge responsibility. United Airlines cancels flights without notice; when weather grounds a flight, the airline holds you hostage on the runway with soft drinks and packets of peanuts to sustain you. Then, to make amends, it announces that it plans to cut down on the number of regular flights. Its new slogan, I guess, would be, "United Airlines . . . Fewer flights to fewer places, but it beats sitting on the runway for 12 hours."

Consumers feel as if they have no power. The power to move industry resides on Wall Street, whose analysts can diminish a company's value overnight, and in Washington, where regulators can change the size and profitability of a company without batting an eye. In the shadow of these behemoths, the consumer is reduced to a tiny figure crying in the wilderness. More often than not, his protests go unheard--literally.

Have you tried to register a complaint lately--with anyone? Try getting through to "consumer relations" at any major corporation in the United States. I maintain there isn't a single real person working in consumer relations. There is only a voice in voice mail. When you call to register a complaint, you get led through the voice mail maze, which goes something like this:

"You have just been connected with the consumer relations voice mail system of Stonewall Unlimited. If you are slightly unhappy with our product, press 1. If you are quite unhappy, press 2. If you are fuming mad at us, press 3. If you are looking to rip someone's head off, press 4." So you press 4, and a new line of questions starts. "If you are planning to sue us for less than a million dollars, press 1 . . . . "

In time you give up. The other night I called my local power authority to report an outage in East Hampton, N.Y., where we have more blackouts than London during the Blitz. After 20 minutes of punching 1, 2, 3 and 4 like a trained chimp and finding myself unable to connect with a human voice, I elected to sit in darkness and sulk.

How did it come to this? Whatever happened to "The customer is always right"?

The men who believed in that old adage have long since died and gone to corporate heaven. Back in the early 1900s, corporations were very often owned by men whose names were on the front of their factories or stores. Names like Edison, Macy, Chrysler, Gimbel, Firestone. Many of them were scoundrels, but they took great pride in the products they made, and they all shared the belief that the customer was king.

Back in those days, it was not unusual for the head of a corporation to pick up the phone and personally field a complaint. If you called the Firestone Tire Company, you might have actually gotten Harvey S. himself, or at least his faithful secretary. With no "hold" button on the phone, the secretary would put her palm over the mouthpiece and whisper something like, "It's a customer and he sounds mad. He wants to speak to you, Mr. Firestone."

Can't you just see Harvey Firestone picking up the phone in his office in Akron and soothing the caller? I can just imagine what he'd say: "You're on the Ohio Turnpike and one of my tires blew on your Model-T? Tell you the truth, we've been having that problem with our tires lately. Why don't you come on by here and we'll replace it free. Hell, I'll replace all your tires. When you get here tell the guard at the desk to call up to me. I'll come help you put the tires on, too."

But Harvey Firestone grew old and died of natural causes, which is more than you can say for some of his company's recent customers.

By the 1950s, the Harvey Firestones of the world were by and large replaced by men who wouldn't know one of their customers if they ran over him. These new men were faceless and nameless to the average customer, and that's the way they wanted it to be. They hid behind improved phone technology that insulated them from the public. Now, with voice mail, an executive can hide from a dissatisfied customer forever. They changed the name of the complaint department to the consumer relations department. No complaint department? Voil! No complaints.

But the real reason consumers have lost their power is because they no longer inspire fear. Consumers used to be respected because for years, the heads of corporations were afraid of them. When customers wrote letters, businesses sat up and took notice. I know, because I saw it happen. I had been in advertising for three months in the 1960s when I had my first nightmare meeting. The advertising manager was waving three handwritten letters at the agency team and shouting that he was about to pull an ad. The client was Esquire men's socks, and the ad in question simply showed a very well-dressed man sitting shoeless in his living room with a rather large bulldog at his stockinged feet.

"What's wrong with that?" I asked the art director.

"People hate the bulldog. One guy says dogs are disgusting creatures and don't belong in advertising. He says he's never going to wear Esquire socks again."

A very nervous account executive suggested the dog be airbrushed out of the picture. "Good," grumbled the ad manager. "Then I'll be able to write these people and tell them I've taken some action."

Cut to 35 years later. Firestone executives would rather go to Congress to state their case and write an "open" letter to the Wall Street Journal to soothe jumpy stockholders than write a personal letter to someone who was nearly killed by one of their tires.

Consumers once struck fear in the heart of business because they were so unpredictable. They could make or break a product and no one really knew why. Then, in the early 1960s, along came consumer research and focus groups, and pretty soon, the elusive consumer was no longer a mystery. It is now possible for me as an advertising man to attend a focus group and discover just the right word that will get a consumer to switch products. With the secrets of their buying habits laid bare, consumers' power evaporated.

Corporate attention quickly turned to Wall Street and to Washington. Soon half a million unhappy customers weren't half as worrisome as one unhappy politician, or one gloomy analyst skewering a company on a financial network. Meanwhile, consumers were slow to notice that they were no longer the center of attention. By the time they realized the letters they were writing weren't being read, it was too late. Eventually they threw up their hands, stopped writing letters and turned the other cheek.

But consumers can still win back the fear and respect of corporate America. And they can do it by writing letters. Just not as consumers.

Instead, every unhappy consumer must assume the role of a Wall Street analyst or a government regulator. I can tell you how to do this. I have a plan for a new business, which I call Scaryletterhead.com. This is how it will work.

Let's say you're fuming because you had a lousy ride on a United Airlines flight. You want to lodge a complaint. Are you going to make a phone call and get the "Press 1 for domestic flight information" runaround? No sir. Now you will be able to go to your computer and log on to Scaryletterhead.com. There, for a modest fee, you may download from a menu of more than 10,000 legitimate letterheads, each designed to throw a scare into even the most callous corporate type.

For a bad airline flight, I recommend downloading two of my favorites: the official FAA inspector letterhead and, my own personal choice, the Goldman Sachs letterhead, strategically imprinted with those three tiny terrifying words--Airline Industry Analyst.

A word of warning: You must never say in your letter that you are employed by the firm whose letterhead you are borrowing. That's against the law. Instead, claim nothing but hint at everything. Using the FAA letterhead, you might say: "Ever since I was a small child I have had dreams of working for the FAA and cracking down on airlines that close their doors 45 minutes before they actually take off and employ flight attendants who spill hot coffee on the laps of innocent passengers. Let me tell you about a recent flight on your so-called airline, etc., etc."

If you want to go the financial terrorism route, I suggest you begin: "Gentlemen, I would like to invite you to my home for a conference about the terrible flight I recently had on your airline. My door will always be open and hot coffee will be served in cups instead of spilled on laps, as I recently experienced on my last--and I mean last--flight on your airline."

I can't speak for the rest of the dot-com economy, but I will say this. The financial future of Scaryletterhead.com--of which I must disclose I am the founder and sole shareholder--is assured as long as there are unhappy customers who want to get even.

A final note. If you have any complaints about Scaryletterhead.com and you have a few hours to waste punching numbers on your phone, feel free to call my consumer relations department.

Jerry Della Femina is chairman of Della Femina Rothschild Jeary Advertising in New York.

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