Letters

    1. Last Saturday at White Plains you boarded a ShortVista bus to Ithaca, New York, a city 225 miles northwest of Westchester.  The bus was scheduled to make five stops along the way and to arrive in Ithaca at , just in time for you to attend an important regional luncheon at the Statler Hotel at Cornell University starting at .  (You were to be a panel speaker at this function and had accepted the appointment two months ago.  You planned to return to White Plains the same afternoon on the bus.)

    At about the driver of your bus, after making four scheduled stops to pick up passengers, turned off Route 17 at Hortonville for an unscheduled stop at a roadside snack bar.  He told the passengers they would be there a “few minutes to stretch and have a snack if they wished.”  Since your hands were sticky after eating a candy bar, you visited the rest room to wash them.  About two minutes later, when you came outside, the bus was gone!  The driver had apparently left without a warning toot or a count of passengers!  You were stranded off Route 17, 15 miles from the next scheduled bus top.  No other bus was to pass on the freeway for another three hours!  You would surely miss the entire function at Cornell.  Seeing how upset you were, the snack bar operators stated that this incident was the second in one week that the same driver had left a passenger stranded at the same place.  Rather than have you miss the luncheon, one of the two operators generously offer to drive you in her car to the next bus stop in Deposit, New York—15 miles away.  You managed to arrive just before the bus did, and you gave $25 to your Good Samaritan and then rushed out to board the bus.  Not one word of apology came from the bus driver!  At the Statler all your colleagues agreed with you that the driver should be reported.

    Write an effective letter to the customer service manager at ShortVista,

    311 Main Street, Ellenville, New York12709

    .  Request whatever adjustment you believe is fair.  Make your letter as concise as possible but retain all crucial information about this incident.

    1. Last Tuesday you took an interesting tour with a group of 15 other business executives through the Mitchel Lumber Mills.  All of you had attended a conference on safety management, and the tour was scheduled as part of the conference.  After walking from one building to another, you happened to be the target for a glob of tar that dripped from the roof of one of the mills as you entered.  It fell on the left shoulder, on your new suit.  Jason Ambrecht, Plant Manager, suggested that after the suit was cleaned, you should send the bill to the Mill.  You picked up your suit this morning from the cleaner and would now like to be reimbursed for $14.25.  Write a courteous letter to obtain the desired action.  The address is
      26 Mill Lane, Suffern, NY10923

      .

    1. As building manager of a large condominium complex, RavenswoodGardens,
      35 Apple Lane, Peekskill10566

      .  Each condominium unit has one assigned parking space.  The guest parking is to be allocated for guests only, and a security guard makes certain that guests and visitors park in those spaces for not more than two days at a time.  The boyfriend of Ms. Janice Stroh, resident of Unit 3H, has been parking each night for the past month in one of the guest spaces.  The policy of the condominium is that Ms. Stroh would have to purchase an extra parking space for $2500 or rent one for $50 per month.  Even though you have contacted her voice mail and left messages about her guest’s violation of the parking rules, she has not responded.  Write her a letter to inform her that she must arrange for off-site parking for her guest or purchase or rent on-site parking.  You are empowered to remove the offending car by having it towed if it is not properly parked one week from today.

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