Corespondences with my bank manager

This is my original letter:

Dear Mr. ______,

This letter is in regards to some difficulty I had recently with a privately managed ATM, and your bank's response to my trouble. It is my hope that you will be able to rectify this problem, as I have already jumped though several hoops to no avail.

I will spare you the boring details of all the inquiries I've made so far. Sufficed to say there is certain amount of disagreement between your branch and the folks at TeleScotia over who is responsible for handling this issue on my behalf.

The issue is this: on December 23 I used (out of desperation, and much to my shame) one of those awful privately managed ATM's to make a withdrawal. I asked the machine for $80, it gave me $60. According to the person I talked to most recently at TeleScotia, because the amount I'm out by is less than $20.01 no one will launch an official "investigation" into the matter. As you can imagine, this state of affairs does not sit well with me.

What I expect from your people is nothing short of their best effort. If an investigation will not be launched then I should be refunded the $20 immediately, no questions asked, either by yourselves or, preferably, the service provider. I would also ask that the $1.50 "convenience charge" be refunded, as I have found this whole experience to be far from convenient.

Of course $21.50 is not a life and death matter for me; as you can see from my bank balance I have plenty of money in savings. What I am most concerned with is the principle of the matter. A privately owned ATM should have the same responsibilities as a major bank for mistakes it makes, irregardless of the total amount of the mistake. I hope you will look into this matter further and/or advise me as to what steps I must take to ensure justice is done.

Sincerely,
____ _______ (valued member of your branch for over 10 years.)
Ph. 783-____

This is his response:

____:
i read your email & empathize with your dilemma. as you, it is extremely
annoying when things like this happen but more so when there appears to be
little or nothing that can be done or no one seems to care. i cannot think
that any of this was done with any malice or forethought to the outcome as
more than likely it was the machine mechanics such as sticking bills not
being picked up, a skip on the bill pickup or even the machine or internal
tray running out of money and the switch over not being seamless. while
these are only anecdotal situations describing things that go wrong, it
doesn't make anything better when it happens to you. i have investigated
the transaction to the complete extent i can in that a third party atm was
requested to disperse funds of $80 to you and that's what the records show.
it does not show what was punched in & ultimately dispersed. your recourse
then, is to the atm provider. they are able to balance out the transactions
matching input to output but again, there can be variables here as well
such as was the machine correctly loaded and so on. the long and the short
is you recognized the cost of value in using these 3rd party machines and
now have had that reinforced. have we had similar situations here? yes, but
so infrequently & by this i mean 2 or 3 times in my 35 year career. have
there been more times when a customer just chalks it up to a bad experience
and does not notify us? certainly possible. what do we do when it is our
machine? for the amount here, just reimburse as good public relations. will
the 3rd party atm provider reimburse. loss - principal of the situation is
probably your determing factor. i have reimbursed you the bns transaction
fee & can only leave you with this. sometimes, & just as infrequently as
the 2 or 3 times mentioned above, the transaction goes the other way. i
have heard, anecdotally again, of one machine being loaded with $20's
instead of $10's & having a loss of $10,000 when the machine just kept
spitting out what it was programmed to do; only with $20 bills instead og
$10's. regards, _______ _________, manager

This was my response to his response:

Dear Mr. _______,

First of all, thank you for reimbursing the service charge on the
transaction I brought to your attention last week, I appreciate the
gesture. However, I was disappointed with your response in general.

The grammar of the email you sent was extremely poor and, in my
opinion, unacceptable. The tone of your letter, for the most part is
conciliatory, but the lack of care taken in editing the response makes
it seem as though you are dashing it off without real consideration or
respect.

Perhaps in the course of everyday business it is now common practice
to draft an email much the way one would conduct a conversation—I'm
not sure as I do not use email as a daily tool in my work. However, I
was taught that written correspondences, including email, are
typically treated as more formal documents, especially when responding
to an inquiry from outside.

You, and your entire organization, would do well to consider the
communications elements of your service model a little more closely.
The thrust of my letter was to:
a) determine what steps I could take to seek full reparation,
primarily as a matter of principle; and
b) point out the confusing customer service I received while perusing
this matter.
Aside from the reimbursement you offered, the jumbled response you
sent only added to my confusion and irritation.

It would have been better if you'd just said:

>Dear ____,

>I apologize for the trouble that this incident has caused you. As a
gesture of my goodwill I >have reimbursed you for the service charge,
as you requested. Unfortunately I am unable >to do anything about the
$20 you did not receive. For that you will need to contact the
>service provider directly. We will be happy to help you in any way we
can.

I'm sorry if I sound like a snob, I don't mean to be rude. However, I
do have high expectations of your institution and I feel it is my
right to speak out when I am disappointed.

Sincerely,
____ _______