Writing bad-news messages
Dear Ms. Leketa Young,
Introduction
Our esteemed customer, I received your email. In the package, you are bringing to my attention the fact that the jacket you bought from my women’s clothing shop in California turned out to be defective since the panes have different coloring. You also requested for refund of the cost of the jacket and the shipping charges. Thank you for expressing your claims to me. Unfortunately, I’m sorry to inform you that it will not be possible to refund you for reasons that you will understand.
Reasons for refusal
- Leather jacket is defective and refund of the money
- Shipping charges
Solutions
- Defective leather jacket
I do remember very well selling you the leather jacket. It was the end of the winter season. As you know, during that time the demand for leather jackets was so high. You walked into my shop and unfortunately it was the only remaining jacket. You therefore had to pick the one and only that was on stock. I had bought the high quality jackets from Angaros of Italy. I bought hundreds of the jackets and fortunately I succeeded to sell them all. It was the last jacket and so I decided to sale it to you at a cost of $379. However, the actual cost of the jacket was $700. I had sold all the other jackets at the actual price and so far, I have not received any claim of defectiveness from the customers. The difference in colors of the jacket is actually meant to make the jacket more attractive. Please, be aware of that.
It is also a policy of my business that goods once sold cannot be accepted. I remember quite well bringing to your attention the logo that was above the sales racks. It read, “all sales final”. You agreed to this and we ranged up the sales. Accepting the jacket will be compromising the principles of the business.
I’m not certain whether you keenly examined the jacket. If you looked at it, you may have seen a tag on it that says, “Leather is a natural material and, as such, will contain subtle variations in coloring and texture”. That is how leather jackets look like. You would have seen the same if we had subjected the jacket to sunlight when we were transacting the business. I can confidently advise you to remain with the jacket. Be assured that you possess a high-quality garment.
- Shipping charges
I’m incurring an extra cost of $19 to ship the jacket back to you. It is my humble request that you pay the extra charges. If you would like to pay the charges via a credit card, please find an attached letter that will direct you on how to resubmit your credit card information. Please make the payment in good time. I expect to hear from you soon. Please accept the jacket and pay the extra charges.
As I conclude, it is my hope that you have clearly understood why it will not be promising to take the leather jacket back and refund you. However, it is a decision that I have made after clearly scrutinizing the consequences that it will have to both of us. Please stomach with me. It is our tradition to serve our customers to the best of our abilities. I promise that the misfortune that happened to you will not happen again in future. I expect to hear from you soon. Please accept the jacket and pay the extra charges. You make us what we are; fill free to buy from us; we value you. If you have any query, feel free to contact me at 555-768-897 so that we can discuss it. Thank you.
RE: Refusal of request.
This is a reply message to the refund request made by your company. Eastern state university regrets to report to you that the request was declined. The Executive development program was tailored to enhance the skills of the corporate leaders and other business people. As such, this program is suited for community service and the institution does not make any profit from them. The program runs on a three weeks basis to sharpen the skills of executives and equip them with the necessary and upcoming trends in the business world. In addition, the university offers chances competitively this anyone is free to apply whenever the chance arises. The reasons that led to refusal of the request were as follows;
Reasons
- Non refund policy
The university has no refund policy to all the monies paid to the institution in support of the program. This is because the program was meant to benefit the society thus the university does not derive any direct benefit from them. In addition, the institution usually budgets for a whole class when setting the program thus the funds have already been utilized. The price charged in at a break-even point where any changes can lead to loses.
Secondly, the university wishes to inform you that the program is open to many professionals. In regard to this, there were many offers that had to be turned down in your favor. It is thus expected that you attend the function. The institution cannot afford to make a loss since a class has an optimum capacity of 20. Refunding the company will be violating the institutions policies of non-refunding for non-profitable programs. Therefore, the organizers of the program cannot allow such a situation to occur.
- External factors
The board does not consider the activities of Middleton Oil and Gas incl. thus the reasons for increased activities are not related to this program. The costs such as venues charges, amenities such as power and other utilities are not dependent on individual students but the whole a class is treated as a package. Moreover, the charges for the professors attending the directors are calculated on a 20 people class basis rather than individual students. This means that a refund of the two people cannot be of any benefit to the institution but will only inflict loses. We hope that you understand these reasons.
- Turned down offers
It is not economical to turn down seven offers for the same course to accept your managers. This is unacceptable in both social and economic setting. The university would get the charges for the two persons with no strain had you detected the probability of increased business. A refund of $27000 would be too damaging to the budget of the program since many costs are fixed and do not depend on the size of the class.
Solutions
- Temporary replacement
The only solution that is available at this point is to allow the executives to attend the program by either finding some people to hold on their chores for a while. This is possible since the training takes only three weeks. This is recommendable since the course is very beneficial and can increase productivity of the executives. This can be a better undertaking than to forego the $27000. Hiring part time staff that will carry on with the duties of the executives in their absence will not be an expensive undertaking.
- Pushing forward the funds to next program
The management can also decide to attend the program next session by pushing forward the funds.
In conclusion, the university calls for your cooperation and understanding as we aim to improve the quality of skills of the executives. As a reminder, the program was initiated as a goodwill course to the community in order to increase the quality of output. I hope that you will continue cooperating with the institution despite the small hitch. Feel free to contact us in case you need further clarifications.
Thank you.
Director: Eastern State University’s Executive Development Program
The president,
EconoAir, Inc.
RE: Revision of the incentive program
This is to inform you that due to unavoidable circumstances, EconoAir has decided to revise the incentive program from two points per mile to one point per mile taking effect immediately. The motive of this incentive was to award our loyal customers through better bargains and satisfaction. However, this has proved to be very costly to the company due to unfavorable business factors. The management collectively decided to reduce the loyalty program due to the following reasons:
Reasons
- Fluctuating customers volumes
The incentive program was intended to award our clients with extra benefits for every mile they covered. The pioneers of this plan had designed it on the basis that many clients will offer the company with great economies of scale thus buffering itself from the negative effects of the incentive. However, this worked in the short run and the effects have started to be felt with the decrease of customers. Our decision has been influenced heavily by recent fluctuations in the amount of passenger traffic. The company has experienced a decline in its passenger volumes due to stiff competition from the other companies. There has been emergence of many service providers thus the business has to boost its revenues. In fact, all the airlines apply the one mile one point policy which means that the firm has been experiencing a lot of hardships trying to enforce this policy.
- Increased competition
Increase of players in the industry has increased competition for passengers which has made the operational cost to increase. In this regard, the company has devoiced this mechanism, as one way to minimize the expenses.
- Hard economic situation
The industry is in a very hard economic condition since even business travels have reduced. This has prompted the company to take affirmative action to buffer itself from a possible crisis. The cost of offering the incentive increases when the passengers’ numbers decline. The program works on the idea of economies of scale. What this implies is that low passenger volumes are not suitable for the incentive. Having this incentive program is denying the company a lot of funds thereby lowering the saving capacity.
The airline has recorded notable growth over the past years especially after the launching of the program. The reason for this growth was that there were few firms which offered such packages. This prompted many customers to prefer our services. However, the other firms slowly imitated the company’s policies in an attempt to cut through our market. Their influence has made the management to revert the policy back to one mile one point. We believe customers’ value our quality service more than the incentives. This is the reason that we believe convinces our customers to stick with us. Moreover, reducing these incentives will enable use increase the quality of our services which in turn will enable us serve you better.
Solutions
We would wish to confirm to our esteemed customers that the quality will of our services will not be compromised by the changes in incentive policy. EconoAir remains devoted to provide the highest services in the industry and we think this is the main reasons why our clients come again and again. We therefore confirm that the quality of our services will never be revised downwards under any circumstances. We hope that you will cooperate with the new policies for our mutual benefits.
For more information, please contact t our head offices or visit our website.
We look forward to your cooperation.
Sincerely
Pierre Delaware,
President EconAir
