Urgent: Product recall.

My back has been niggling this weekend. It reminded me of a letter I wrote a while ago to the ACCC (The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission) to initiate a product recall, due to God's shoddy design of the human back.

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Dear Sir,

I have watched with interest and admiration as the ACCC has taken on the high and mighty and wrought justice for the common man, often seemingly against the odds. Bravo!

I feel it is time that the ACCC took on the highest and mightiest, the ultimate multinational that has shown no respect for the individual and quite callously distributed shoddy material to the general populace for far, far too long.

God.

Now my principle gripe is with the design, reliability and lack of service and support that relate to the human back. It is clearly a second rate design, poorly thought out, badly produced and all attempts at getting in touch with the service department have fallen on deaf ears.

There is a compelling case for a product recall.

I would urge you to take up this case on behalf of myself and all others who suffer from the negligence of this all too aloof manufacturer. No other manufacturer would be allowed to foist such shoddy merchandise on the public. It's time for a day of reckoning.

And don't think that you cannot do it. Sure he's big, but after the EPA slapped an order on him a few millennia back there has been a mark reduction in world-wide floods, parting of seas, plagues of locusts and sundry pestilence, and the ecologically damaging down-porings of manna. And smiting has been reduced to next do nothing.

You'll certainly have my backing.

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The ACCC replied:

Thank you for your letter of 14 November regarding faults with the human back.

You allege that God has been negligent in regard of the design, reliability and service of the human back.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) administers the Trade Practices Act 1974 which applies to corporations who are engaged in 'trade or commerce'.

Generally issues of theology do not raise matters of trade or commerce and consequently the ACCC is unable to investigate your complaint.

Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

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I had a second attempt:

Thank you for your reply to my letter regarding the urgent need to slap a product recall notice on that most dubious entrepreneur God, slum landlord and supplier of shoddy backs.

I feel more than a little disappointed that you did not take up the challenge.

I am not familiar with the wording of the Trade Practices Act 1974 but I am sure that it requires you to perform your duties without fear or favour, providing consumer protection from the purveyors of fine snake oil, regardless of whether they hand it down from the cloud covered mountain tops or flog it door to door.

You state in your letter that God is not engaged in 'trade or commerce' and that this is why he does not come under the umbrella of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

I disagree.

Man was, we are told, made in God's image. Badly made, I contend. This sure smacks of the ill-considered franchise 'opportunities' found in the back pages of the business section of the daily papers. If not a franchise then this is a pyramid deal of enormous dimensions.

Jesus, currently the Operations Manager - World Wide (formerly Regional Manager - Galilee), when asked what he was doing in the temple replied "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

This confession alone should be enough for you to get stuck into Him.

I urge you to reconsider your decision.

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Silence from the gentlemen of the ACCC.

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