We apologize for any inconvenience …

Really.

Feel badly, do you?

This "We apologize for any inconvenience" phrase is rapidly becoming meaningless, seeing as how it’s both overused and usually immediately follows someone telling you the corporate equivalent of “go pound sand”. The truly irksome thing is not the insincerity of the sentiment, it’s that most of the time the inconvenience is, if not intentional, certainly not causing any sleepless nights over at the XYZ Company.

If you want to be truthful, the response should be “Yeah, we know it’s a pain for our customers. What of it?”

I imagine there really are some firms that are sincerely apologetic, it’s just the two I’ve recently been dealing with (Chase & Vonage) clearly aren’t. But it’s not just them, I see this phraseology all the time and virtually always with the same preceding “shove it”.

Listen, don’t fake sincerity. If the customer is wrong, you can point out their error, apologize for the misunderstanding and offer solutions to fix it. If the customer isn’t wrong, you need to make it right for them.

Case in point is the Chase situation. Their interpretation of their fine print (define “may”) and mine vary. Their corporate policy is to define “may” as “will”. Legal issues aside, they should either change their disclosure wording or acknowledge my understanding. Instead their response is “This the way we do it” (go pound sand) and “We apologize for any inconvenience”. It’s not inconvenient – it’s wrong and you should offer to fix it.

How about “We’re sorry you misunderstood what we meant, but you’re gonna have to live with it.” At least it’d be honest.