Your Task. Revise the following statements to imply the bad news. If possible, use passive-voice verbs and subordinate clauses to further de-emphasize the bad news.

Direct refusal: We cannot send you a price list, nor can we sell our lawn mowers directly to customers. We sell only through authorized dealers, and your dealer is HomeCo.

Implied refusal: Our lawn mowers are sold only through authorized dealers, and your dealer is HomeCo.

We cannot ship our fresh fruit baskets c. o. d. Your order was not accompanied by payment, so we are not shipping it. We have it ready, though, and will rush it to its destination as soon as you call us with your credit card number.

Answer and explanation:

There are different techniques used to lower the impact of bad news. Among them, we can identify positioning the bad news strategically (usually at the end of the message), using the passive voice, accentuating the positive, implying the refusal, and suggesting a compromise or alternative.

While using passive voice, the subject is depersonalized by making the action be what matters in the message. In some cases, the use of passive voice is accompanied by a subordinate clause (sentences that require another to make sense). Therefore in the example, the segment:

We cannot ship our fresh fruit baskets c. o. d. Your order was not accompanied by payment, so we are not shipping it. We have it ready, though, and will rush it to its destination as soon as you call us with your credit card number;

can be turned into:

Our fresh fruit basket c. o. d. cannot be shipped because your order was not accompanied by payment. Call us with your credit card number to rush it to its destination because we have it ready.