Heh, 'complain through channels'. That's rich.
I've tried 'going through the channels' before, with some paperwork around here. Bottom-line paper-pusher. Their supervisor, who assured me it would be taken care of post-haste. Twice.
So let's try the guy above them. he said they were both wrong--it was actually above
him. Oh, well that's perf-- No.
To heck with the next level or two, DA gets a call. She says she'll look into it. A week passes. Another call, another promise. Another week, and I end up on the phone telling the DA, personally, that, quote, "I have a list of names here.
Someone on this list isn't doing their job, and
someone is covering them. Please, inform me who this is, so I'll know who I need to talk to or if I need to get my lawyer (I mentioned his name, he had a few things to say about the DA himself, and I knew they had bad blood between them) involved to talk to a few people." I really do hate having to play politics.
I got the paperwork three days later, dated for a week before that date on one spot, and the day after on another,
earlier portion.
Point is, people watch the the people under them, if just because they want to shift the blame up. The trick is to
skip a few channels. Then the bigwigs start yelling over why the heck it got that far, and they're pretty eager get stuff done when failure to do so means they get a call from a judge or a visit from a rival.