I'm going to be marking a lot of letters of complaint and apology in the next couple of weeks, as you send in your In-Tray Exams. Here's my general advice too:
Complaining
Think your strategy through before you put fingers to the keyboard. The more specific and limited your aims are, the more likely it is you'll achieve them … but if your aim is just to let off steam, it's much more satisfying to go out with your mates and have a moan! In other words, tell the company you're complaining to what happened (objectively and dispassionately) and what you want them to do to compensate you. Most often, the company just want to know how much to send you and where to send it to - the badwill created by messing your around is just so much more expensive than a reasonable sum in compensation.
Remember, too, that it's not your job to effect changes in the company's practices - you just want your money back!
Apologising
The most frequently-made mistake is *not* to actually apologise! And if you wait until the end of your letter to write the magic words "We apologise for …", then it makes the rest of your letter sound like an excuse or a cover-up. You'll almost certainly be suggesting some kind of programme of measures to compensate for the mistake or correct it. Remember to leave the final decision with the client - nothing irritates people more than to have the 'guilty party' presenting you with a fait accompli and then expecting you to be grateful to them!
Read your suggested remedies aloud to yourself too (a great way of discovering mistakes, since you hear mistakes a lot easier than seeing them) - do they actually make sense to you? Remember that you're addressing someone who's likely to be mildly stressed or irritated - they've got to be able to understand what you're suggesting directly.
Good luck with the Exam!
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