How to Apologize in a Funny Way
Aditya January 15th
Today morning I received an email from Dreamhost, the web hosting company about my billing reminder. It was like –
This is just a notice that your DreamHost Account #xxxxxx has a balance of $xxx.xx (including any charges not due until 2009-01-18), with $xxx.xx due (since 2008-12-18).
You also have $xxx.xx past due (owed since 2008-11-18), and if by 2009-01-18 you do not pay at least the $xxx.xx part, your account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.
At a first glance, I was totally confused because I didn’t understand why they are charging me for the next year? Then after re-reading it, I thought this has to be a blunder in their billing system.
But before I contact them and show my frustration, they sent me a following reply. It was very nice.
Through a COMPLETE bumbling on our part, we’ve accidentally attempted to charge you for the ENTIRE year of 2008 (and probably 2009!) ALREADY (it was all due to a fat finger)!
We’re really really really embarassed about this, but you have nothing to worry about. Please ignore any confusing billing messages you may have received recently; we’ve already removed all those bum future charges on your account and fixed everything up.
Thank you very very much for your patience with this.. we PROMISE this won’t happen again. There’s no need to reply to this message unless of course you have any other questions at all!
Sincerely,
The Foolish DreamHost Billing Team!
I really liked the way they handled it. I totally forgot my frustration because of the funny tone of their message. And I want to thank them for making me laugh. Kudos to their support team!
Update: Techcrunch has a post on the same issue.
