Ms. Minnie MacElroy
Minnie's Miniscule Miniatures
27694 Bay Point Lane,
Bonita Springs, FL 34134
Dear Madam,
We consider you as one of our valued customers, and we appreciate serving you the best way we can to propel the growth of your business. May we draw your attention to the services that we’ve rendered to you as a show of our desire to maintain a mutual good business relationship with you. When you requested to change the design of the site that you have already approved, we did it promptly even if it meant that we had to work more hours than what our quote covered. Once your site was activated, we made further changes according to your request, and we didn’t charge you any additional amount. By the time that your monthly hosting payment became erratic, we agreed to defer your payments until your business gets better. As per business standards, we’re only one of the few companies that are willing to defer late payments from clients as a show of courtesy and appreciation for being one of our valued customers.
However, it has come to a point that our business is now adversely affected by non-payment of delinquent accounts. For this kind of business, it’s difficult to continue operating without paying our regular obligations to our creditors. We have fully informed you about this matter, and have sent several communications with you regarding non-payment of your account for 6 months, but we didn’t receive anything from you in response. We’ve even made repeated calls to you but we didn’t hear anything from you. Because of this, we regret to inform you that we have decided to terminate our contract with you. You’ll understand that it’s difficult for us to arrive at this decision because we don’t want to lose any client. But since we cannot afford to continue our business without collecting overdue accounts as we have our own financial obligations to settle, we’ve finally come into this decision.
In connection with this, we would like to bring your attention to the contract provision that you have signed stating that “if any account becomes unpaid, WebTastic has the option to make the site non-functional.” Our contract also provides that “WebTastic has the right to retain the copyright of the design that it has created for any site.” If you have any comments about this matter, we’ll be glad to talk it over with you. We reiterate that it’s been a difficult process to come into this decision especially that we consider you as one of our valued customers.
Thank you for your kind understanding about this matter.
Very truly yours,
________________________
Summary:
In writing this letter, I used the principle of “diplomacy” to point out the client’s shortcomings in following the provisions stated in the contract. I avoided any derogatory remarks that would agitate anger on the client and instead, pointed out the good things that I have done for her which clearly manifested my desire to do business with her in a reputable way. It just so happens that I have to terminate the contract because “I can’t continue my business with a lot of overdue accounts.” I just focused on the contract provisions regarding the “delinquent payment” of the client as the main reason for breaching the contract. The clarity of the message has been delivered in a courteous manner without causing the client to misunderstand the content of the letter. The content of the letter is also concrete and concise because I have mentioned the efforts that I exerted in collecting the late payment, but I didn’t receive anything in response.
Work Cited
Guffey, Mary Ellen. 2013. Business Communication Newsletter.
Retrieved from: http://guffey.cengage.com/newsletter/
