Cracking!

When I received the letter below, I was glad that I owed money to Egg, rather than being one of their investors. The way I see it, if a company cannot look after an apostrophe, how can they be trusted to look after the more complex matters of international finance?

Not only was the punctuation funny, but so was the problem the letter reported. I sent the following letter to find out more:

Egg
Cardholder Services BH2
Basildon
Essex
SS99 6TE

Dear Sir,

Ref 4766 8000 6120 9002

I received a letter from you, dated 26th April 2001, in which you stated:

"I am writing to advise you that we have been unable to collect your Direct Debit payment this month on it's due date."

I have two points to raise about this. Firstly, I would like to know exactly what sort of problems you encountered on the due date, which I assume was the 25th April. There was an available balance in my bank account of approximately four times the amount you were supposed to be debiting, so I cannot see what may have caused your problem. Secondly, the use of the word "it's" is incorrect in your letter. For the possessive pronoun, the apostrophe is not used.

I look forward to your explanations.

Yours faithfully.

Ashley Frieze.