Keisha Brent Essays - Learning, Critical Thinking, Narratology

Keisha Brent October 18, 2016 Digital Literacies 3100 Response to Complaint Letter Mrs. Smith used both good and bad rhetorical strategies to support her argument against both the Eq uity Group and Mavinworks , LLC in her co mplaint letter. She used inductive reasoning, when she implicated her exact problems with the company appraiser and provided specific evidence backing the issue she had with the original appraisal and the revised one. Considering the company did not only make a mistake once but twice. Overlooking simple things such as the number of rooms and listing add-ons to the house that doesn't exist, gives the reader a clear example of careless mistakes the appraiser made; lacking professionalism. Mrs. Smith made a comment saying she could understand why the appraiser wasn't able to secure a good sale due to the atypical lot size, she used a comparing and contrasting strategy to explain why. She compared her personal experience in working in construction and how appraisers are conservative with their opinions when the formula is not simple. But, in contrast she stated that the appraiser still supposed to accurately evaluate the property. Which almost come across as self-contradiction to her argument against the appraiser, making her argument a bit weak because there is no way to accurately rate an atypical space. But, it also supports her argument because she explain that she know how things could get in that field from personal experience. Another rhetorical strategy I noticed in the letter that stuck out was the circular argument. Mrs. Smith kept restatin g the same issues throughout the letter rather than actually addressing the problem at hand, sort of came across as ranting. Also she got a bit side tracked when she begin to tell why her and her husband liked the home. Although, you could see the connection she tried to make between the house value then and now it was a bit off topic as far as the actual appraisal complaint. Lastly, I like how Mrs. Smith made a few sarcastic remarks about how long the company been in business and not being able to simply tell whether or not a home has a fireplace, making her argument a bit clever. She also ended her letter with an either/or strategy, which oversimplifies her argument by reducing it to only two choices. Those two choices was for her and her husband to receive a refund or she would contact the Better Business Bureau and post on social media sites regarding the company displ easing services. Almost making it seem as if she was purposing a threat to the company which could be good or bad, but she cleaned it up nicely by stating she would be contacting a lawyer to gain counsel. Doing just that letter the equity group know she was serious about the issue and didn't mind pressing the issue legally. All in all the rhetorical strategies Mrs. Smith used in the letter were a bold choice. I say this because she took a risk with her choice of words and examples both supporting her argument and some made it weak as well. The main thing I may have done differently would be to include more about the appraiser services. For instance was there any other problems or disagreements about the appraisal considering it was a huge amount difference, the 3 rd party consultants would need to know more about the issue. Other than that I probably would have kept the either/or approach to solve the problem being that the company did make the same mistakes twice and clearly didn't take the revised appraisal serious.