Nissan and Mazda - dead from the neck up, sadly. Kinda like a cockroach minus its head.

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Five or six weeks ago, I fired a broadside into Nissan when the company - through its local dealer - sought to dodge what I viewed as its consumer law obligations. It attempted to stitch up a shitbox leaf owner, Philip Carlson, to the tune of $33,000 for a replacement Nissan Leaf battery, which in my view should have been replaced for free under Australian Consumer Law.

Happily enough, 170,000 people just like you watched those two Nissan reports, to date. For a total of 1.4 million minutes. Which is, to me, a brain bender. It’s a total eyeballs-on-screen engagement of 2.6 years worth of cumulative watch time, distributed among 170,000 people. Potential car buyers.

Exactly one month later I covered the case of Mazda being dragged to the ankle-grabbing room - I mean: Federal Court - by the ACCC for alleged deception and unconscionable conduct. Also quite serious, if proven.

Two videos there. 130,000 viewers - eyeballs glued to the screen for a total of just over one million minutes. (That’s almost two years.)

In these reports, I urged you to write to Nissan’s and Mazda’s chief spin doctors, Karla Leach and Mark Flintoft, respectively, politely but firmly to deliver unequivocally what you thought about each company’s conduct.

And I know hundreds of you e-mailed these two PR types - because dozens and dozens of you CC’d me on those e-mails. And I was extremely gratified by the polite tone and well thought out, reasoned, rational arguments I saw.

You know what didn’t happen - to the absolute best of my knowledge? No response from Mazda or Nissan to you.

So, let’s say you are a PR type, and one day, without warning, your inbox fills up with critical feedback from the public. This is in your wheelhouse.

What do you do? Do you pretend it’s just not happening and concentrate instead on keeping your sinister clutch of tame journalists and influencers happy, and maintain your platinum frequent flier status, which, let’s face it, is quite important?

I really don’t think ‘deafening silence’ is an option. Here’s why: if somebody out there, in the public, takes the time to write what they think, to you, politely and respectfully, as the CC’d e-mails I received were, and they send it to you … then I’d suggest there’s a level of quite strong commitment behind that stated position embodied in those actions.

For the recipient - the spin doctor - it’s a binary proposition: You can choose to respond, or not. And hey - if you respond it doesn’t have to be bespoke. It can be canned, cut and paste, and the intern can filter your e-mails and send back the canned responses, but at least it’s a friggin’ response.

I’d suggest that every critical e-mail is the chance to turn someone around, and this is the business you spin doctors are in. ‘We understand your concerns, we hear what you’ve said, and here’s what we’re doing to address the issue.’ How f-ken hard is it?

Electing not to respond is a gold-plated guarantee of the sender inferring you are a worthless mother-lover who does not give a fuck what they think. And that’s exactly what has occurred here, I suspect. Because not one of the 300,000 people who viewed those reports sent me an e-mail with Nissan’s nor Mazda’s responses in it, nor posted the same in the comments feed. Conclusion: It didn’t happen.