Recently I have been working on purchasing a house. As some of our clients know I just recently got married and the next step in my life is to purchase a house. While working on the financing though I found out I have a big pet peeve and its unprofessional letters in professional circumstances…What you have to understand is that we correspond regularly with owners of companies and people who lead entire marketing departments to help them with their business hosting, web consulting and website designs. We work hard to be as professional as possible while having a really great time at our job. While working on purchasing a house, I got a letter which really drove me crazy. The amazing thing is that it came from the person who is handling my financing!!! This honestly made me a little nervous, getting an unprofessional letter from a person who is supposed to be considered as professional as possible. So, what could a professional write to me that basically made my nerves shot?

Here are the basics of the letter:

We have received you’re Conditional Loan Approval. Our lender is requiring the fallowing items prior to you’re closing. I will need all items turned into me by 8/24 12:00 to keep you’re closing date of 8/30.

Thank you,
Anonymous (I removed the name)

Now, lets pick this thing apart for a second. I can almost forgive the spelling errors like “fallowing”, but I know that even Hotmail has a spell checker – please use it…

But that is not at all my biggest gripe at all. The real problem is that she wrote this entire letter using the font “Comic Sans”. This is a real issue that I see more and more with some people. I wish everyone would get a memo that says “DO NOT USE COMIC SANS” It is NOT professional and honestly it makes your professional letters look like a 12yr old girl wrote it. I know the problem is that these people want to “cutesie” up their e-mails, but Cute is NOT professional. Honestly if she was not working under a much more competent broker, I would never have used her company for this reason. It might sound harsh, but it gave me a feeling that the company she works for is not professional enough to be handling my future Home Loan. Home Loans are very important and need to be handled as such. Using “Cute” fonts for your e-mails reflects poorly on your company and makes people think twice about working with you.

So, Here is the Memo for anyone who needs it.
“Do Not Use Comic Sans” I know its cute… But thats the problem!

Note:
As amazing as this sounds, this is a real e-mail from a very reputable company here in Atlanta. This is not one of those African Scams or anything. The person who wrote this is a Loan Processor who works under a major broker. This is totally legit, and yes I made my concerns known to the broker. I honestly think this girl is new to the company, but her boss says she isn’t, which makes me more nervous because either no one told her or no one had a problem with it but me. I really doubt I am the first person to have a problem with it.

tags: Cutsie, Cute, Fonts, Comic, Sans, Profession, Letters, Unprofessional

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 1:20 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.