DO NOT COPY LONG PHRASES OR SENTENCES FROM THIS CASE. You can use words from the case, but not phrasing. The case deliberately contains tone and wording that would not be effective in claim or adjustment business messages. Assignments with substantial copied wording will not pass. You're a member of a local professional association in charge of organizing regular "Lunch and Learn seminars. The association usually books conference facilities at pretty fancy hotels, but you've decided to save money by booking with a smaller hotel instead. A smaller hotel means cheaper catering you typically provide lunch), cheaper rental rates, and cheaper parking rates. When you were organizing lunch, you asked members to let you know of any special dietary needs (by Nov. 29). You then sent Wendy Winter, the catering manager at the hotel, the final catering order on Nov. 30. Everything seems to be going well-it's Friday Dec 2, and the seminar is Monday Dec. 5-when you get a phone call from Harry Holiday, who registered for the seminar. Harry tells you he just found out from his doctor that he has a gluten allergy. He's willing to bring his own lunch if needed, he knows it might be too late to order him a special meal. However, you assure him he'll get a gluten-free lunch so he doesn't have to bring his own. You briefly consider buying Harry a lunch yourself from a local caf. However, as you've already ordered four gluten-free meals for other members, you figure it shouldn't be difficult for the hotel to add one more. You call Wendy Winter, but she's not in-probably gone home already for the weekend. Her voicemail directs you to a different phone number for after-hours customer service, so you call it. You speak to Sirius Sled in customer service and explain the situation. He's super helpful and totally assures you it's absolutely no problem to add the extra gluten-free meal for the event. He'll definitely make a replacement for one of the regular meals with a gluten-free meal. You make sure to tell him that your catering order would now be for 24 regular lunch meals and 5 meals that are gluten-free (not 25 regular lunch meals and 4 meals that are gluten-free) You go back to working on a million other things-you're busy! Normally, you'd send a confirmation email about the new details, but Wendy is gone for the weekend so you figure there's no point Sirius was really quite definite and confident that the change was no problem at all, and you definitely were really clear about the new numbers on the phone. Now it's lunchtime on the day of the seminar (Dec. 5), and you've just discovered there are only four lunches that are gluten-free. Not only are you one gluten-free lunch short, there's an extra regular lunch that no one needs! Everyone's trying to be polite about who gets the lunches, but you're pretty mad. This shouldn't have happened. Clearly, the change you requested for Harry on Friday didn't get added to the catering order. You try to call Wendy or Sirius, but they're not in. The hotel catering and customer service staff are pretty nice and apologetic, but they say their records show you only ordered four gluten-free meals (and 25 regular lunches), so they only have four ready. You run out and get Harry a gluten-free lunch from a cafe around the corner, and he's very appreciative, but it's not the kind of professional service your members expect. They not only pay annual dues to the association, they also pay a fee for the seminar. They have the right to expect high quality! After it's all over, you sit down to write Wendy an email. You have the invoice for the catering costs that the catering staff gave you at the event, and it charges you for 25 regular meals and 4 gluten-free ones. However, you don't want to pay for the one regular meal, since nobody wanted or needed it! Before this event you'd planned to keep using the hotel for future events, but now you're not so sure You're going to be polite and professional, but you aren't feeling very positive about something going wrong the very first time you use Wendy's hotel for your association's seminars. You would have been perfectly ok with buying Harry a lunch ahead of time yourself, you know the request to change a meal was last minute. However, Sirius had assured you it was no problem, so you'd trusted him. Write the claim email to Wendy that asks her to make the change to the invoice for the event on Dec. 5 so that you don't have to pay for that extra meal. You'd like the new invoice pretty soon, so you can finish up all the paperwork and expenses for the seminar. Adjustment Case Scenario You're Ms. Wendy Winter, catering manager of the Frosty Hotel. You receive an email from a customer (the claim message described above). You're horrified-how could this have happened? You'd really like the association to be an ongoing customer that books all events with you. To make this client happy in your adjustment email message, you'll need to do the following (make up whatever information would be reasonable, professional, and effective for the situation)': Use your adjustment message notes to guide you about what to do and what not to do) in the opening, middle, and closing of adjustments. Grant the claim (give the customer what she wants). You may offer any additional "extras" that are reasonable Regain the customer's confidence fully and thoroughly (e-g-quality control, explanation/investigation, future improvement). This situation is deliberately open-ended, so you have a variety of "what happened" options to work with. Remember, no matter what you decide (e.g. what went wrong, who was at fault), you should Avoid blaming others (e.g. Sirius, even if you decide he was at fault). Instead, take responsibility and be tactful when mentioning other staff's involvement. Be positive about your company and all its staff (including yourself). Make explanation reasonable and believable. What explanations would convince the reader that your company isn't bad/careless? What explanations would allow you to improve your services by changing something? What explanations would be likely/believable? Remember: no extreme situations like hospitalizations, floods, fires, alien invasions, etc