I cannot believe they thought this response was appropriate.  By now I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Gasp Jeans Debacle.  Just in case you haven’t here is the link to the article, it has links to the original email and their response.  Summarising the whole event though would make it easier for you.  A lady went shopping with her bridesmaids into Gasp Jeans, she received inappropriate treatment from the salesperson, complained to the company and received an email in reply.  Here is her email and here is their reply.  They’ll all open in new windows so you won’t lose your place here.

There are just so many things wrong with their response that I can’t talk about all of them in one post and I’m not going to come back another time and finish off.  First of all they haven’t apologised for this behaviour and in the business world that’s just wrong and damaging, then there are so many grammatical errors I don’t even want to think about counting them, there are missing commas, ‘whom’ is used inappropriately in at least three occasions and the whole tone of the email is just so wrong – it’s really the only word I can find to use as I’ve used inappropriate far too many times already.

I actually liked the first paragraph, until I read the rest of the email.  By itself the first paragraph is really good and gives a positive impression, it makes me feel as if they’ve got a well balanced view of the situation.  Unfortunately, the rest of the email tells me they’re just ignoring the customer and listening to their salesperson.

Lessons I’ve learned being in business is that you should always apologise, never leave the customer feeling upset with you and your business as this could backfire.  A disgruntled customer will tell 100 people whereas a happy customer will tell 10, never leave your customer disgruntled.  In this social media happy world it’s business suicide to do what they’ve done.  Instead of apologising they’ve got on their high horse and told the customer she’s not worthy of buying their clothes.  They’ve assumed she’s a salesperson working in a chain store when her email doesn’t say that at all, she could be the lowest salesperson (unlikely with 12 years experience) or the owner of her own retail chain, they just had no idea and assumed.  A rule in life, never assume as you make an ass out of you and me.

The second paragraph is the first mistake.  They’ve put it in a very negative manner, the lesson here is always write it in a positive way.  Instead of telling the lady they ‘do not appeal’ it should read ‘are selected for the elite’, it’s not much better as that’s also very exclusionist but it is definitely an improvement and might have the effect of making the reader feel more included.  The phrase ‘this by default’ is missing a couple of commas.

Let’s have a little look at a phrase in the third paragraph.  ‘on the basis to ensure that’ is something I’m a little puzzled by, it makes no sense.  I’d be thinking of leaving out ‘on the basis’, that might help but that whole paragraph is very clunky.

In the fourth paragraph they have ‘whom’ three times, none of which are correct.  Assuming they wanted to word that sentence so poorly then ‘who’ should have been used in all three occasions.  I’ll stay on that sentence for a few moments, it has such potential for failure.  There should be commas both before and after the phrase ‘whom served you’.  I find myself asking why is this guy working in retail?  If he has a ‘sixth sense for fashion’ then he shouldn’t be in the frontline with fashion, he shouldn’t be working in a retail store, he should be helping to select the next fashion lines.  At this point I’m going to interject, I’ve had a quick glance at their clothes and while they’re quite nice and stylish I would not have thought they were fashionable but I suppose it depends on what you like. ‘too good at what he does’ another phrase in this sentence that irritates me, why is he working in a shop if he’s too good at what he does?  The phrase ‘do not tolerate having their time wasted’ is a phrase I agree with but it’s so arrogant to put it in a letter supposedly dealing with a complaint never tell the customer you don’t tolerate having your time wasted unless it’s actually been wasted.  If you’ve spent weeks working on something for a customer only to be told they’ve decided not to buy it then you would have grounds to use that phrase but to use it in this situation is just arrogant.

How did he know she wasn’t going to buy anything before she ‘even left your house’.  That is just not possible unless he has a time machine or a crystal ball.  This is one angry person who hasn’t stopped to think about the ramifications of their email or wording. They are just trying to make a point overdoing it in the process and making themselves look even more foolish than before.  You don’t know who is coming into your shop or what they do, how much they earn or so many other questions.

I can’t help wondering who actually wrote this email.  I have two thoughts, maybe it was the salesman himself or a work experience person.  On the other hand I won’t denigrate work experience people by thinking that.  I’ve had enough, reading that email so many times just hurts.  There are so many things wrong with it I wish I could just take a red pen to it but there’d be nothing left of the text.