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Fiona
How to let people feel tender when writing the email Today, I spent almost an hour to write an email to my customer. However, my boss made a call to me after he read this email. He said the sentence I worte was too strong. Let people feel not good. But I think it was very tender. Beacuse I tried every word in my brain to write this email. He told to me, the declarative sentence is not the good choice in the business email. Instead, the interrogative sentence will be better! I have no idea about this, can you tell me what should I do? Below is some sentences in my business email. "There is one thing we want to discuss with you. As you know, the FOB price quoted to you was based on one container, but your purchase order now did not reach one container. However, Our price did not increase against your bulk cargo. For this case, the FOB Local charges will be a large cost for us, we will loss. So we have to charge you for this cost. The total amount is 250USD. Hope you can understand." Friends, Can you give me some suggestion?
Dec 13, 2012 12:06 PM
Corrections · 2
2

Your wording is a little direct. Here is how I would have written it:

"There seems to be a problem with your order. I hope we can resolve this. As you know, the FOB price that our company quoted you was for one container, but actually, your order did not completely fill a single container. As such, our price for the cargo did not go up. Our FOB charge, as you probably know, will be substantial, even though we are not shipping a full container. Since we our shipping less of our product, our company is shipping to you at a loss of profit. Our company values its customers, but in this case, we are sorry that we will have to charge you the entire cost of shipping.  We hope you understand our position and if there are any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us."

May 19, 2013
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