How to write about delivery delays
Ob Sie sich beim Kunden für eine verspätete Lieferung entschuldigen wollen, oder ob Sie sich über eine Verspätung beschweren wollen – mit diesen Ausdrücken kommen Sie garantiert gut an.
If you have ordered goods and they are late, you contact the seller by telephone, letter or email and ask for an explanation and a delivery date. If you are the seller, you should apologise for any delay, regardless of whether it is your fault or not. Simply stating the reasons does not promote goodwill be-
tween companies. Apologise briefly at the beginning and at the end of your letter or email. This is what you can include in your letter, email or fax.
Here are some useful phrases to talk about delivery delays, whether you are the buyer or seller.
Buyer
- The 500 books ordered last month (order no. 123) still haven’t arrived.
- Some of our customers are threatening to cancel their orders.
- We must be certain the consignment will reach our premises bythe end of next week.
- If you cannot meet this deadline, we will have to cancel the order.
- Please let us know why the goods have been delayed.
- Please let us know by return exactly when the books will arrive.
- I must point out that we will have to charge you with any additional expenses incurred by us as a result of this delay.
- We are sure we can count on you to deliver the books within the requested period.
Seller
- We are sorry to have to tell you that, owing to circumstances beyond our control, delivery of the 500 books ordered by you on12. February will be delayed bytwo weeks.
(Note: never say this without explaining what the ‘circumstances’ beyond your control are. If you don’t it could sound as if you don’t really care.)
- The delay is due to a fire at the warehouse / the insolvency of one of our suppliers / a short-age of paper.
- As a result, we have had to seek a new supplier / an alternative supply of raw materials.
- As an alternative, we could offer you article 12345, which is very similar in design.
- If you agree, we would be happy to send you article 678 immediately and article 890 at the beginning of next month.
- Under these circumstances we are reducing the price of this consignment by 5%.
- We would like to repeat how sorry we are for the delay. We will do our best to see that it does not happen again.