I've had the opposite happen to me. I try to be polite, but things don't get done until I start getting angry/threatening.
Old boss at the bank took 1000 out of my account due to an error. I'm being pretty patient and understanding as I know my old company usually got things done quickly. She said she'd get it fixed next payroll...two weeks away, but I agreed. I wait, nothing happens. She says she'll look into it and I should check back next week. I check in and she goes on vacation. By this time, I'm extremely pissed. I talk to an ombudsman AND I email her manager. Whens she gets back, she immediately calls me, but tries to walk around it and delay again, by now, it's a been almost a month since her error resulted in a 1000 loan to the bank. THIS time, I tell her she's not taking me seriously and that I would NOT accept any more waiting. I threatened to go above HER boss if things weren't resolved AND go to the next step with the ombudsman - she got things done fast enough.
Another time, someone set up a scam near my workplace that stole debit card numbers and PIN numbers. My mom notices it as we have joint account and 500 taken out. I tell her I'll look into it, and she says she'll go to the bank to look into it as well. When she goes to the bank, the bank manager tries to imply that *I* had stolen the money (I worked for these fuckers by the way), and then tried to pin the blame on my wife, then she called other workers into the office and threatened to call the cops. Now, I know my mom isn't exactly the politest person in the world, but to have your son, daughter-in-law, AND yourself threatened with police action? So, I called the ombudsman, ombudsman call the manager, and I received a call from her not 5 minutes after calling the ombudsman and she's falling over trying to sound friendly and sincere whilst assuring me things would be taken care of.
To the OP: I've worked at the bank and we've screwed up plenty of times (losses resulting in hundreds of thousands once), and when the customer gets upset, WE take it upon ourselves to fix it ASAP (apparently, not with my problem though). The customer certainly has a right to be upset because we fucked up. Where I worked, we didn't think of ourselves as individuals, but as a team and we succeeded or fucked up as a whole because poor service affected the company as a whole. The customer rep may not have been responsible, but he/she was likely embarrassed and the first thing done was to get it taken care of right away. To you complainers against the OP, I'd like to see how you react when your politely worded email is politely ignored as it's happened to me plenty of times.
If you come up with that attitude, I'd take my sweet ass time getting to what you want done. I think others who have done any type of customer service / retail work would agree.
