Presenting Negative Info Assignment 9.22

Presenting Negative Information – Week 4 (9.22)

Assignment: (A reminder: we are switching the positive and negative message assns. on the syllabus)

Using what you have learned so far, from your readings and the writing assignments, about strategies for writing “reader-oriented” letters, as well as conveying negative info, or “bad news”, and the sound principles of communication, write a fully thought-out letter responding to one of the following cases.

For the purposes of this assignment, you will find small groups listed during this week on the discussion board. When you have finished your letter, please attach or paste your rough draft letter to the group that you are a part of. Beginning early next week, you will be assigned peer workshop criteria.


Case A: Who Will Pay the Return Shipping? You are the head of accounting at Lux Electronics, and you have a mess on your hands. Ted Langstrom who was in charge of purchasing as well as accounts receivable and payable really screwed up. No wonder Bill Tidewater, the CEO, fired him for his disorganization and high order rate. You discovered on Thursday, July 13, that you needed 200 gallons by Monday, July 17, of a special variant of an acid, Lathacor, used in the processing of metal for some of your finer electronic parts. Ted, the idiot, ordered 2,000 gallons in order #74532 from Florax Chemical, a specialty chemical company. They had to ship the chemical from Florida, the only location they had it in storage to your Holland, MI, factory. Worse, because this was hazardous material, they had to use a special truck and pay extra fees. Since this had to be trucked quickly, they had to pay the trucking company overtime. At $50 a gallon, they had indicated over the phone when Ted was confirming the order that, similar to other good faith orders, they would cover the cost of shipping to Michigan. When they arrived, however, Ted’s mistake was discovered. Lux just didn’t have any place to store the extra chemicals. In fact, the 200 gallons were more than enough for the next four months. After several frantic phone calls, a disgruntled John Markum agreed to take back the excess gallons, but furiously told Ted that Lux would have to pay the return shipment, and Ted agreed, glad to get rid of the problem. Now you have the Invoice for the order on your desk with a charge of $10,000 for the Lathacor and an additional charge of $1,432 for the return shipment of the excess to Florida with the attached charge from Florida Trucking to Florax Chemical verifying this charge. While you don’t think $1,432 is too much given the total dollar volume with Florax, the CEO Bill Tidewater absolutely refuses to pay it. “They have always covered shipping, and they agreed to cover shipping this time.” As a hard as you tried to explain why you think Lux should pay the return shipment, Bill has been adamant. “If they want to do business with us,” Bill shouted, “they can cover the cost of the shipping. What do we do with them anyway, a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of business.” You didn’t want to correct Bill but last year, your first year of operation, you did $72,345 worth of Business with Florax and you are growing. Bill insists that you pay only the cost of the chemical order and that you write to John Markum with the return invoice and the payment explaining why Lux will not pay for the shipment. “It’s there problem,” he shouted. You, however, know you will need to handle this very carefully. You really need to keep Florax as your supplier since they have all the chemicals you need, deliver them promptly when you need them, and at the best price in the industry. If you lose Florax as a supplier, you know, even if it is unfair, Bill will take it out on you. Sometimes working in business can just be very hard.

Case B There goes all that work! You work for IT at Ferris State University and have been put in charge of the conversion of Ferris from WebCT to Vista, a Blackboard project. Okay, none of this is Ferris fault. Blackboard Inc. purchased the company that owned WebCT and is fazing out the product. As a result, Ferris will have to change to Vista by Winter Semester 2007, just a few months away. You have been working hard at your end to get Vista up and running. Here is the glitch. While a lot of WebCT content and functions will transfer to Vista fairly easily, it isn’t going to be an easy process. Bulletin functions will be different, automatic Quiz banks may not transfer well, web content page may not all translate, and links will be broken. While there are some similarities, there will also be differences. Obviously you can’t transfer every faculty member’s course from WebCT to Vista. You have a full time job just managing the installation of Vista. The faculty are going to have to take charge of this. They will need to backup their files. Well, that is easy, they simply need to use Program Controls and under Manage Course follow the backup. Unfortunately, most will not remember that once they backup their course they still have to save it as a zip file to their hard drive using the same function. The backups will be gone come January 15, 2007, and if they haven’t saved their backups they will lose everything. You can hear the complaining now. Once Vista is launched, they are going to have to take responsibility for pulling together their courses. First they will need to e-mail you by December 1, 2006, the list of every course, including the section number for the courses, that they will be offering as a Vista supported course Winter 2007. You won’t get much Christmas vacation as you create the Vista framework for all of those course. But you aren’t doing more than creating the basic Vista template. The faculty are just going to have to upload their files, and it won’t always work. But you don’t really know what will work and what will not work in the transition. You can hear the complaints. They should e-mail you at tech support when they have problems or call #5423. Obviously you won’t answer their e-mails or phone calls; but you have a number of great students working tech support who will try to help. You know already, however, that a lot of faculty courses will just have to be rebuilt, even if it did take hundreds of hours to create the course in the first place. Worse, the Vice President of Academic Affairs is breathing down your neck. He has insisted that you write to the faculty about the situation. Fine. But then he insisted, “Make certain you write to them so that they remain committed to using Web support for their classes. Students like it, and it is an important part of our image. Heck, more faculty at Ferris use Web support in their class than any other comparable institution.” Enough avoidance you recognize as you sit down to write this difficult message.



Case C Badly Honda. You work as a customer service representative for Honda Corporation at its Marion, Ohio, headquarters. You received the following letter requesting $300 reimbursement and the attached letter to the service manager. Obviously, it is your responsibility to re-establish this customer’s goodwill toward Honda. Unfortunately, you cannot offer the $300 reimbursement. Copies of his bills confirm his claims. Since the dealerships and their service departments are independent of the parent corporation, you cannot reimburse someone for shoddy service. Such reimbursements need to come from the individual dealership. You are very limited in what you can do since the problem is not with the car itself. You will want to think hard about what you could do reasonably in this situation that would be received positively by the customer. Any action that would cost Honda money would need to be approved by your supervisor, me. Please write to the customer.

Roger Helfner. 1328 Ramble Road. Grand Rapids, MI. 49505
Customer Service
Honda Corporation
32 Honda Plaza
Marion, OH 38562
I would like to request a $450 reimbursement for the poor service I received at Badly Honda service center in Grand Rapids. My letter to the Badly Service Manager will explain the reason for my dissatisfaction.
As the enclosed bills confirm, I made the following payments to Badly Service for the work they completed on my 1999 Honda Civic.
· Replaced timing belt $660
· 120,000 mile service $340
· Front break repair $240
· Replaced CV joints $450

Since I was repeatedly misinformed about the CV joint problem and had to make repeated trips to the service center, only to discover that they had failed to adequately repair my vehicle, I believe I should be reimbursed for the cost of the CV joint replacements.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,
Roger Helfner

Roger Helfner. 1328 Ramble Road. Grand Rapids, MI. 49505
Tim Nolo, Service Manager
Badly Honda
1314 Craymore, S.W.
Grand Rapids, MI 49513
Dear Mr. Nolo:
Badly Honda continues to offer the worst service I have ever experienced, service so poor that it is close to dangerous. Indeed, after we purchased our Honda Civic in 1999, the terrible service we received was the major reason we did not buy another Honda. Since then, we have owned a variety of models and used a number of service centers, all of them excellent. When we returned Badly for our 120,000 mile service on our 99 Civic, I assumed that the service had improved. It has not; if anything, the impossibly poor service has gotten worse.
We made an appointment to have the timing belt on our Civic changed, to have the 120,000 mile service, and to have a shaking investigated. We dropped off the car at 7:30 A.M. and were told the car would be done approximately by 2:00 P.M. We called at 2:00 P.M. but no one seemed able to either tell us the status of our vehicle or a completion time. At 5:00 P.M. we needed to fulfill a dinner obligation. After the dinner obligation, we stopped at the service center only to be informed that our front breaks were warped and needed repairs. We authorized the repairs and returned home. I do not begrudge the delay for the extra repairs; however, any competent service would have determined the initial problem early in the repair process to get effective authorization for the repair in a timely manner.
The subsequent events underscores the incompetence of your service department. The next day we were called and informed that the breaks were fixed and that we could pick up the car. I paid the bill, now over $1,000, and carefully read it. Almost unnoticeable at the bottom of the bill was an indication that the right CV Boot was split open and that the left side had deep cracks. No service representative told us about this potentially serious problem, and if I had not read the bill with unusual care, we would not have known about the problem until the axle was damaged. I spoke to a service representative who simply put his hand under the car and immediately agreed that it was broken. How could the mechanic have missed this problem in initially servicing the car? I asked how safe it was to drive the car with this flaw. Initially the representative indicated that it was safe to drive, but when pushed for an explanation, he indicated that it could seriously damage the axle. We contracted to have both CV joints replaced. The next day we were called and told our car was done. Because I distrust Badly Honda and since the bill was less than expected, once again I checked with the mechanic who made the repairs. Once again Badly Honda had failed in its contracted responsibilities and had only replaced the broken CV joint and had failed to replace the cracked joint. Again, the problem was dismissed. I asked about the cracks and was told "that the joint might last until Chirstmas. We might not know if it broke before the axle was damaged. For the third time, we returned home from Badly without our car while the cracked CV joint was replaced.
Even though we were spending over a $1,500 in repairs, we were treated not as valuable customers but as a nuisance for simply asking for the service we initially requested. More alarming, however, is that the poor communication by your service department could have resulted in either serious damage to the vehicle or, worse, a life threatening accident.
Your service letter indicates clearly that you have no interest in improving the quality of your department. You do not, as do all other service departments with which I have dealt, provide a pre-addressed, stamped survey questionnaire that asks for vital customer satisfaction data. While you claim that "Your complete satisfaction is our goal!" it is clear that you do not act on that goal. Given Badly Honda’s disregard for the satisfaction or the safety of its customers, I will forward a copy of this letter as well as copies of the bills with a cover letter to the appropriate representatives in Honda and to the Better Business Bureau.
You can be sure that, thanks to the incompetence of your service department, the new car we purchase to replace my wife’s 99 Civic will probably not be a Honda and certainly will not be purchased from Badly Honda.

Sincerely,
Roger Helfner


Case D Tax Problem. You work for Tax Management Co., 353 Ottawa Avenue, Grand Rapids, MI 49503. (616) 234-7862. During the mid-April rush at tax time last year, Hilda Black phoned to ask whether she could roll over funds from one retirement account into another without paying taxes on any gain. You answered that such a rollover was not considered a tax event, as long as the transaction was completed in 60 days. You also informed her that when she eventually draws out the funds to supplement her retirement income, she will pay taxes on the portion that represents interest earned on the account.
Today Ms. Black (622 Park NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49505) has phoned to say that she is being billed by the Internal Revenue Service for $1,309.72 in penalties and back interest because she failed to declare interest income earned when she cashed in ‘those bonds that I told you about last April.’ You explain that bonds are not the same thing as an IRA. One difference, unfortunately, is that people are required to pay taxes the following April on any interest income or capital gains earned by cashing in bonds. “But wait a minute,” Ms. Black went on, “the bonds were for retirement, and I sank the money back into long term retirement bonds. The company even calls them retirement bonds.” You tried to explain to her that regardless of what the security firm calls them, bonds are not the same as IRA’s and are taxable.
Your client is not satisfied. She demands “something in writing” to show her lawyer.” Her position is that you misled her, so you should pay the penalties and interest charges, which, of course, are getting larger every day. She is willing to pay the actual tax on the transaction. “After all,” she insisted, “I never said IRA. It is your job as a professional to ask the right questions. If you had asked me, I would have explained that they were bonds. Heck, the information should be somewhere in my file.” Frankly, you recognize that she does have a point. If it had not been a phone transaction and you hadn’t been so busy, you probably would have taken the time to more carefully review her situation and offered her better advice. Still, you cannot start the precedent of paying the penalties and interest whenever there is a confusion. You would like to blow her off completely; however, she has been a reliable customer. Worse she is really well connected at the Cascade Country Club which has been a considerable source of business. “Boy,” you think, “I better be careful on this one since my letter will be read by a lawyer. I certainly don’t want to admit liability. But I don’t want to generate ill-will either.”

Case E Longwood Country Club. You work as Head Pro at Longwood Country Club, an exclusive club in Nedik, MA, a 20 - 30 minute drive outside of Boston, MA. This 18-hole club is fairly attractive (you can imagine your own features as long as they are reasonable). Your employer is the owner of the country club, Bob Packwood. Six months ago Bob Packwood had asked you to increase the number of private lessons you offered to the club’s more prestigious members. At the time because of staff cut backs, you were swamped. You had to manage the Pro Shop, the course maintenance, and some of the other pros. In a cost cutting move earlier in the year, the club did not replace one pro who could offer lessons or a separate manager for the Pro Shop. While you did have one golf pro in the shop and an intern, you found that the shop was eating up a lot of time. There is a crew and a manager for that crew who takes care of course management; but, unfortunately, they had a tendency to be very sloppy. In fact, in an inspection you found that the fairways were too long and there were indentations where the old holes on the greens had been. Members had complained to you about the condition of the course. You recommended to Mr Packwood that he make Tim Sullivan a manager of the pro shop. Tim Sullivan, a graduate of Grand Valley State University’s PGM program, had been pretty effective as an intern. He was great with customers and did terrific club repairs, but his management skills hadn’t been tested. Still you recommended that Mr. Packwood hire Mr. Sullivan to manage the Pro Shop. He was reluctant to take Mr. Sullivan on because of the additional $10,000 a year cost, but you finally convinced him. At first, the change was helpful and gave you the free time to offer the lessons that Mr. Packwood required of you. However, as the season wore on Tim Sullivan’s performance has steadily deteriorated. He just can’t seem to learn basic management skills. You have mentored him, repeatedly offered instructions and suggestions, warned him twice verbally, and warned him twice in writing. He is very sloppy at maintaining records, forgets to order supplies and equipment, and orders items that a long history has demonstrated do not sell well at Longwood. He is so rude in his treatment of the other pro and the occasional part time help that they have all threatened to quit. Worse still he has begun to get a little surly with some of the members. You have to admit it; you made a mistake in hiring him, and you would like Mr. Packwood’s permission to fire him. However, you can’t afford to simply take over the management of the Pro Shop yourself and continue to offer lessons, direct tournaments, and fulfill the rest of your responsibilities. You would like to begin the process of hiring someone experienced running a pro shop. You believe that it will cost $30,000 to hire someone to run the pro shop on a full time basis. Write to Mr. Packwood asking for permission to fire Tim Sullivan and to begin the process to hire a full time manager for the Pro Shop.