Is it Good to Complain When there's Really Nothing that can be Done?

[Fireball]

I'm confused. You wrote something and don't like the editing. Why did you hire them? Not trying be mean, I just don't understand that. I wouldn't allow anyone to edit any paper I wrote. Of course, few people are that interested in the topic of electromagnetic propagation and scattering. MSWORD grammar was the first thing I turned off when I got a new work computer. Their subject-verb agreement software is essentially backwards. Spelling was second to be emasculated. I absolutely detest "auto correct". I also had to add lots of words to the dictionary with every new computer.

When it is a large amount of writing you don't want to be the only editor. You could read over the same thing three times knowing what you wanted to say and not realizing that you didn't say it like that. We like to call it a fresh pair of eyes. I have a tendency to leave my work alone for months then go back and reread it as if I have never read it before just to find mistakes. The mind will read what it knows it should be reading not what it is reading.

Thanks, everyone. So I sent them an email that, as you suggested, was concise and polite, delineated what I found objectionable and included a precise call to action (refund or reassignment to a more knowledgeable editor).

Now we shall see what we shall see.

I think it is a great idea to ask for another editor. That way they have an option to still help you without losing you as a customer.

I also try to leave something I wrote alone so that I can forget some details. Then when I get back at it, some stuff is just nonsense, and I fix it. If I'm on a deadline, I'll bash it out fast and then get some knowledgeable people together and review it, making any corrections as needed. Sometimes I pretend someone I don't like wrote it and look to find anything to make them look bad.  One part of my old job was to write instructions to either build something I designed and/or to test it after it was built. We were allowed 1.5 errors in every 100 instruction steps. That error could be as simple as a typo. But when you're building or testing something that can cost millions, and you could break it with a mistake, the instructions had better be right. Even then, I've damaged some pretty spendy items. But I made the company even more money by far than what I damaged.