This is an awesome letter I wrote today. Unfortunately, it was slightly edited down, to make it less... Florid.
Nevertheless, here she is. I was actually quite taken with myself while writing it.
April 6, 2007
TO:
(REDACTED)
Re: Your letter of March 23, 2007, regarding the premises at XXX and YYY.
Messrs. X, Y, Z, and Ms. AA:
Our office represents CORP. LLC, the owner of the buildings at the above-referenced premises. We are incredulously in receipt of your letter dated March 23, 2007, demanding payment of $4,009.88, despite a $0.00 balance reflected in your attached Vendor Ledger. Notwithstanding the fact that it is impossible to discern from which tree of lies [YOUR COMPANY] plucked this particular arbitrary figure, please be advised that our client has absolutely no intention, whatsoever, of paying any such amount given [YOUR COMPANY]’s near total failure to perform under its contract over the past year.
We have kept meticulous records documenting [YOUR COMPANY]’s failure to perform, Violation Notices received from the City of Miami documenting un-remedied repair issues that were [YOUR COMPANY]’s responsibility to repair under the now-defunct contract, and all futile correspondence from our office demanding that [YOUR COMPANY] do its job. Between May 15, 2006 until our client terminated its contract with [YOUR COMPANY] (such termination and received by your offices on January 18, 2007, and not on February 22, 2007 as you assert) [YOUR COMPANY] sat on its thumbs, failed to return telephone calls, and, most importantly, willfully and blatantly failed to perform under its contract. You are owed nothing, as a result of your breach of your contract.
Your letter further comes as a surprise, because [YOUR COMPANY] has debts outstanding to our Client. In response to the May 15, 2006 letter from our office, on May 26, 2006, [YOUR COMPANY'S OFFICIAL] advised, in writing, that [YOUR COMPANY] offered to remedy and repair damage caused by [YOUR COMPANY] to our Client’s stairwell. (This damage occurred while [YOUR COMPANY] negligently and ham-fistedly carried out what would prove to be its swan song in performing under its contract.) Shortly, we will provide you with estimates for the repair work to remedy [YOUR COMPANY]'S damage to our buildings. [YOUR COMPANY] will pay for the same as it has promised.
Although our offices have no idea what response, precisely, you expected to elicit from our Client by virtue of your correspondence of March 23rd, we sardonically applaud your audacity and unabashed chutzpah in drafting and mailing the same. Although appalled by the contents of your correspondence, your service, administration, and management has been so abysmally incompetent, mismanaged and unresponsive, that the most shocking aspect of your letter is that your Company actually managed to put pen to paper and draft the same. That you would demand money for a job not done is simply the feather in the cap.
In sum, your demands are laughable. Our Client is steadfast in its position that it is [YOUR COMPANY], not [OUR CLIENT], who is the party indebted. Our Client shall not pay one cent more to your Corporation, though it expects that you will make good on your promise to remedy and repair your damage. If you do not, rest assured that our offices will pursue any and all legal remedies available to our Client to enforce its rights.
With nothing further, govern yourself accordingly.
Cordially,
8 Comments:
Nice.
12:29 PM
Can you really say things like that legally? Isn't it slander or something?
1:16 PM
I can say whatever I want. That's not slander. If anything, it's libel.
And it would only be libel if I published it to a third party. (I think.)
1:36 PM
And even there, I don't think it constitutes libel. We're not lawfully or civilly obligated to be nice to everyone, all the time. Especially in business. What's a complaint letter for, then?
2:49 PM
You display a poetic side I had heretofor not seen (the language is catching):
"negligently and ham-fistedly carried out what would prove to be its swan song in performing under its contract..."
Worthy of Shakespeare, I would have said.
6:05 PM
Hulles - My favorite part is, "Although our offices have no idea what response, precisely, you expected to elicit from our Client by virtue of your correspondence of March 23rd, we sardonically applaud your audacity and unabashed chutzpah in drafting and mailing the same."
I ::so:: wished that stayed in the letter. When writing Legalese, I transport back to an earlier age... Indeed, be it not far-fetched to speculate that the blood of the Bard himself courses through my head and brains, back and reins, joints and veins; from all pains
He doth well purge and make clean.
(If you pick up on that reference, you are a GOD unto me, but you can't Google it. That's cheating.)
But yes. In the course of my profession, the quill that I set unto parchment is of a variety well diff'rnt than that unto which I set here.
Basically, when writing to people whom I deem to be 1) stupid 2) obstinate or 3) intimidatable, I use, if not a more archaic form of writing, a more Academic and verbose style. At times, my run-on sentences become almost Edwardian. And I clip them down. But when I get the "green light" to "write a strong letter," I relish the opportunity to play a game of intellectual jousting with an opponent who is almost certainly less well armed than me.
I'm pretty fuckin' smart...
8:40 AM
and modest, too. My goodness.
9:07 AM
HAH!
10:29 AM
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