An ODERSA service
Write the letter that gets an answer
Letters That Work turns a situation you need to sort out into a complete letter, with the documents to attach and the right tone. A service of the ODERSA association: free because its content is published under a free licence rather than sold.
- Free, no account
- No data collected
- CC BY 4.0
The reversal
The letter is built here, and it goes nowhere.
Writing a complaint online usually means typing your name, your address and sometimes your identity number into a site covered in adverts. The text you type travels off to an unknown server, and a subscription offer turns up at the end of the process.
Letters That Work does the opposite: the letter is built inside the browser, on the device of the person writing it, and it never leaves.
Nothing you type into Letters That Work leaves the device the page is open on: nothing is sent, nothing is stored elsewhere, there is no account. You can check that promise for yourself, in the Network tab of your browser’s developer tools, while you fill in a template.
Coming in the right door
Where to start
The workshop
A run of plain questions leads to a complete letter, ready to print or to copy.
OpenThe 8 families
8 kinds of letter, from a complaint to exercising your rights over your own data, each with its own method.
OpenAll the templates
Browse the 15 templates already checked, sorted by family.
OpenThe method
Who to address, how to date the facts, what to ask for: the method common to every letter that gets an answer.
OpenSending it and keeping the proof
The letter is ready: how to send it, and how to keep proof that it really went.
OpenFor people helping others
Social worker, volunteer, librarian: what you need to help someone else with their letter.
OpenWhat stays with you
What this site teaches
Fill in one template and the craft stays: these habits hold for any letter, with this tool or without it.
01
Who to write to
A letter that gets an answer goes to the right address first: the department or the person with the power to reply, not a general switchboard.
02
Date the facts
Every event you mention carries its exact date: without it a deadline cannot be worked out, and a fact becomes hard to verify.
03
Name what you rely on
A contract, an invoice, a piece of law: naming precisely the document or the rule you invoke gives the letter a footing that can be checked.
04
Ask for one precise thing
An exact request, with a deadline, gets a clearer reply than a letter that only complains.
05
Keep the proof
Sending has to be provable as much as the contents: a dated copy and a way of sending that records delivery count as much as the words you chose.
06
Follow up without losing your temper
Silence does not cancel the request: a follow-up recalls the facts and the dates, without starting the whole thing again.
In numbers
15
letter templates, ready to fill in
8
families of letters covered
16
legal references checked at source
7
languages planned for this service