My sentiments are distinguised?

[idun]

I HATE all the bowing and scraping at the end of letters I have to send in France. And I need to end a letter which says that I expect someone to do their job and that I am mecontente with them.

 Could I use 'insatisfait avec votre service'. More importantly, should I use that?

[Pierre ZFP]

Could you not slip in a small typo?

Instead of  'distingué'  use    'déguisé'  [6]

[NormanH]

I have put 'vous restez à mon entière disposition' before now.

In your case wouldn't it be   'très insatisfaite de votre service ' if you decide to write that?

[Chancer]

I have just dug out  a letter that I wrote in 2009, it ended, just before the salutation, with the words

 

La politesse me demande de finir avec la salutation qui suit mais je vous rassure que ce n'est pas forcement mes vrai sentiments!

 

I would make a better job of it today but I think it got the message across!!

[Patf]

I usually put cordialement, but if it was a letter of complaint, maybe just sign your name.

I have signed a letter recently with "our distinguished sentiments" but it did look a bit stupid.

Do they still expect that kind of thing? Seems antiquated to me.

[andyh4]

how about:

Je vous souhaite tous que j’ai reçu de votre service.

[Loiseau]

Actually, idun, I think we ladies should not be sending our "sentiments" to anyone but, rather, our "salutations".

Hopefully ericd will pop by to confirm or deny this.

Angela

[Gardengirl]

I'm nirmally very polite and go along with traditional things, but I'm afraid people/companies have to put up with Cordialement from me, I can't be doing with all that out of the ark 'sentiments' stuff. I can't imagine I'd even put that if it was a complaint - I wouldn't be feeling very cordial towards them!

[idun]

Je vous prie d'agréer, Madame/Monsieur, l'expression de ma considération distinguée

I have used that little lot and more in the past. Like what you said Chancer, in fact I have to consider a few things I have read on here.

 

[mint]

I thought all this faff is just a formuliac phrase and means nothing.  It's a convention like yours faithfully, your sincerely, your truly, etc.

You don't have to mean anything by it.  I believe that in linguistics, they call these things phatic communication.  A bit like saying how do you do and you don't expect the other person to be remotely interested in your state of health.

As I write letters so seldom (as opposed to emails which I write all the time) I can't even remember the exact wording and have to dig up an old letter addressed to me and copy the ridiculous phrase out.

I might be wrong in my thinking of course, in which case I look forward to someone putting me right.

[NormanH]

You are right mint that they are just formulaic phrases, but I think that there are subtleties and shades of appropriateness involved in the choice.

I deliberately inverted the usual formula

"Je reste à votre entière disposition"

http://www.francenepal.info/article_view.php?id=4572

to stress the fact that in fact they should be the ones who put themselves out..

[Patf]

We have the Concise Oxford Hachette French Dictionary which has a section in the centre with examples of letters in french for different situations. Many of them end with distinguished sentiments (or salutations).

I get the impression that distingué in french doesn't have the same connotations as disinguished in english.

[mint]

Ericd did tell me once that, if I wanted to curry favour and overdo the forelock-tugging, I could say sentiments respectueux.  Almost bound to get results, apparently[:D]

[idun]

I know that, but it does have a meaning never the less. It means that I am blindly following rules of some sort, and I consider that that is offering some sort of respect towards those that do not deserve it.

Eg. I never called the notaire in our village, maître, I suspect he thought it was because I knew no better, but it was because I had his measure and he was not worthy of a 'title' as I never trusted him.

[mint]

Well, the things that pop into your head when you are doing some mundane task!

I was washing up the pots and pans when it suddenly came to me what I used to see in letters that resembled this French stuffiness.

It is this:  I remain, sir, your obedient servant.  Not that I am old enough to have received letters with phrases like that but I remember seeing letters to my parents that ended like that.

I disagree with some of you here about writing other endings to show anger, disagreement, etc.  It's important to remain polite and socially correct if your objective is to get someone to do something for you.  Never forget what your objective for writing is, if you want your money back, something to be done quickly, some sort of compensation or if you want to negotiate anything at all, it's counter-productive to be deliberately and obviously rude. 

If it really, really sticks in the craw to be even superficially polite, then I rather like Norman's way of doing it.  It leaves them wondering whether you are being rude and sarcastic or merely being ignorant in not knowing the conventions.  Keep your enemy guessing and laugh at them behind their back seems like quite a good tactic to me.

I usually start by being polite and reasonable but usually have one more card up my sleeve.

[idun]

I know how to play the game. And on this occasion I just needed the people concerned to do their job. They had to, and I don't have to be polite, it is the height of rudeness to have not done it in the first place.

In fact they have sent me a confirmation email tonight to say it is done, that before I finished my letter to them. But it has been like pulling teeth getting this sorted and I have spent hours and hours on this already, over several days, when I shouldn't have had to give this another thought after they received my instructions.

[NormanH]

In the same vein mint I have been known to write

'YOU remain, Sir, my obedient servant'....that may well be where the idea of inversion in the French phrase came from..

[suein56]

NormanH wrote : I have been known to write

'YOU remain, Sir, my obedient servant'....

How I would love to be so confident and have the nerve to write something like that at the end of a letter.

If I could pluck up enough courage I suspect that I would spend the days following anxiously waiting retribution.

Sue

[mint]

[quote user="idun"]I know how to play the game. And on this occasion I just needed the people concerned to do their job. They had to, and I don't have to be polite, it is the height of rudeness to have not done it in the first place.

In fact they have sent me a confirmation email tonight to say it is done, that before I finished my letter to them. But it has been like pulling teeth getting this sorted and I have spent hours and hours on this already, over several days, when I shouldn't have had to give this another thought after they received my instructions.[/quote]

Id, I sympathise, having been faced with this type of situation myself.

What I meant was, give it to them by all means, but ONLY after you have achieved what you wanted.

But, as Sue says in her post, be prepared for retribution as some people are incredibly small-minded and will hold a grudge forever.  Of course, if you are unlikely to ever have to deal with them again, then by all means be as rude as you like![:D]

[idun]

And there was me thinking that they had sorted it all out. Well they did, but not once, but twice and frankly they could leave us in all sorts of very very serious problems.

I am now wondering if sarcasm will be wasted on them.

In my mind I think that they should be lined up and take a baseball bat taken to the liars and incompetents who have been dealing with this. Why do people lie.

Conversation:-

Idun   --- It has gone through twice.

Liar    --- Non non Madame, I have sorted this out and cancelled the problem.

Idun   ---- NON! It has gone through twice.

Liar   ---- Non, non, I swear it is OK, mais I'll have a word with my colleague.

Liar   (not lying this time)   ------ Madame it's gone through twice.

My thoughts at that point are unprintable, but in spite of it all, I remained rather polite and pointed out that I had said that already.

I have problems in the UK of a similar ilk, sometimes I do wonder if I don't get more than my fair share of problems, not of my making, I seem to attract them.