cultural nuances and communication

Having worked in Europe for seven years I thought that i understood how to deal with different cultures. in the online/games industry people are pretty relaxed too, so you don’t expect scorchers to come across your desk. I received this one yesterday from a German company.

Hello Brendan,

It has come to our knowledge that you have been trying to cheat on our company by breaking common code of conduct in business.

It is not acceptable trying to avoid legal requirements and attempting to get approval by our CEO directly.
Because of this fact we will not continue the negotiations with you.

Please also refrain from contacting other persons at ——.

I think the mixup stemmed from the fact that the agreement was summarised in a letter form (which had been approved by their lawyers. I’ve been on the phone to try and remedy but cant get through to my contact. Its an interesting quandary

The other side of the coin is that we have had someone making cupboards for us. He drove under a bridge with the set of cupboards so they were split, and then said he’d have it for us for last Friday. there was complete radio silence; not answering calls, emails, texts, nothing…
Until today when i got this message;
hi brendon firstly apologies 4 not getn back 2 u guys, wife dropped a bombshell (soon 2 b ex) so wekend went 2 shit, side and base ready by Friday am, really sory haven’t had time to check emails

from a customer service perspective its understandable (and we did sigh with relief.) but its interesting to counterpoint the two against each other and understand that communication is really difficult, no matter where you are (those were my jerry springer final words)