I’m so sad that Circuit City is going away. My husband and I loved that store and would always go there for our electronics needs.

But, now that it’s history, we’ll be forced to go to that other electronics retailer, the blue one, the one with whom I had a very bad customer experience.

If you’ve read my past columns, you may recall when I wrote about said bad experience. I’ll give you the high points: We bought a refrigerator from Big Blue Box retailer; it died two days after it was delivered to our house; Big Blue Box refused to exchange it and its “customer service” reps were quite rude about it.

It took me about eight hours on the phone, but I finally got them to refund my money and pick up the defective unit. You’d think I’d have been a satisfied customer at that point, right?

Not so much.

They’d been so awful to me that I started a miniletter-writing campaign. I wrote to the local store manager, the district manager and even corporate headquarters. I was dismayed – but not quite shocked – that I never heard a thing back from any of them. Not by phone, not by mail, not by carrier pigeon.

That’s when I took my cause to the Web.

First, I lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau at bbb.org.

Second, I filed complaints at thesqueakywheel.com and my3cents.com. While filing complaints here didn’t help me out, each says it can help you resolve your problem.

If you’d rather just vent, you can find solace – and comrades in the fight – on the many Web sites dedicated to the complaints of disgruntled customers everywhere. Though these sites aren’t as constructive as filing official complaints, they’re certainly a lot more fun.

Allstate Insurance (allstateinsurancesucks.com), PayPal (paypalsucks.com) American Express (amexsux.com) and United Airlines (untied.com) all have unofficial sites for unhappy customers to vent their frustration.

If you can’t find a site dedicated to smearing the retailer that’s the target of your fury and you don’t feel like starting one, go to complaints.com or the complaintbook.com. You’ll at least feel better knowing you got your opinion out there.

Romi Carrell Wittman is a writer and the communication services director for Trico Electric Cooperative. E-mail: romi.wittman@comcast.net.

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