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This memo surfaced from my dad's desk when he
retired. It was one of those "fake" memos that circulated in the
old days before faxes and e-mails. The original gets a little raunchy, and
I have attempted to smooth it over a bit. Incidentally, my dad was a
traffic manager, and had many amusing stories about PC (and PRR) service
problems...
Dear Stew,
In accordance with Company
Policy, we are pleased to announce that your shipment received the same high
quality afforded all our customers, and we feel you are being extremely
pigheaded to gripe about the freight charges, particularly since we did not
over-charge you! You know damned well we have a comprehensive and
equitable rate tariff policy, and we will play hell with your credit unless you
pay this bill.
As you know, we place cars at
your plant in accordance with the way they were placed on the train, regardless
of whether it meets your car order or not. We are reasonably confident the
cars furnished are as ordered a good share of the time; even if they do contain
a half-load of some one else's crap. By God, no one is perfect, I'd like
to see you run a railroad sometime; I bet you'd have a crapper full of
problems, too!
Incidentally, you have really
p.o'd our General Superintendent of Transportation with your arbitrary
statements regarding late delivery. Afterall, the last car you ordered was
only three months over-due, which is a helluva lot better than most of our
customers get. What the hell do you expect? On future orders we
suggest you favor us with a longer haul and we will really bust our butts.
With a long haul routing we can guarantee a maximum later car order condition of
only two months... how's that for 30 day improvement!
As a valued customer, it is
certainly your privilege to request that we furnish cleaner cars closer to the
ordering date, but your snotty attitude will, we are confident, result in our
spotting cars so late you will be in a bind and take any old rattletrap we want
to get rid of!
By the way, don't give us any
crap about order cancellations, we'll charge you anyway. We could,
however, see our way clear to cancel the order if you pay 90% of the freight and
demurrage charges. Otherwise, tough nuts!
In
summary, you work with us and we'll work with you, BUT!! don't pull that irate
customer crap on us. We've been down that path before.
Warm
Personal Regards,
PS
You screwed up again when you insisted our car doesn't resemble what you
ordered. BULL! Your order isn't even close to the car we furnished.
If your don't like the car, why don't you get on your Loading Engineer's butt,
and have him rebuild it! (At your expense, of course.)
Add this to your PC
library!
Lee
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