It is fairly traditional (In British magazines, at least) to have a section of the magazine where if you get poor customer service, you write to them about it. They then 'make enquieries on your behalf' (Which could amount to faxing your letter to the company's PR department with a bit of the magazine's headed paper) and they then print the eventual results in their magazine.
Why do they do this? Well, all media wants to be percieved as 'the champion of the consumer'. And since they have the numbers for PR departments and they offer mass exposure, they can simply send off your complaint to the PR people at the company and they do all the legwork. Then when Mrs. Jones gets a replacement for her faulty kettle and a $15 Sears voucher to compensate her for the cost of premium-rate customer services phone calls, the magazine comes out shining, the company has a forum to say how unusual cases like this are, and Mrs Jones gets a new kettle.
Clever, eh?