Letter part 2

Unfortunately, ARC turned my explanation down and still charged me for the broken racket even though I wrote such a convincing letter. The replying letter is as followed.

Wei-Ying,

I have examined the racquet that you turned in severely broken. Our staff
specifically examines equipment when checked in and when checked out. Based
on the severity of the damage there is no way that I can wave the charge
from your account. It is very obvious that this racquet was damaged by
something other than just waving it in the air.

All of our equipment is highly used. My suggestion is that if you feel that
the racquet was damaged when you received it you should have notified the
staff before leaving Member Services and exchanged it for another one. We
can only go by the proof we have of the damaged racquet.

The charge will remain on your account. If you do not feel comfortable with
the rental equipment that we have my suggestion is that you purchase your
own equipment to use in the facilities.

Sincerely,
Kristina Pettigrew

I decided to try again. This is my response and I hope it could work.

Miss Pettigrew,

I am writing this letter because I believe I used the racket very appropriately. But I am afraid that I have no way to prove how it just broke in the air since I have no video tape to record it. However if there is indeed some surveillance camera on duty in the badminton court, it could prove what I said was totally true.

I will not bother you to find the video tape (if there is one). I just hope you could understand that what happen to me is really physically possible. When a material has a crack on the surface, there will be a phenomenon called stress concentration. The crack will not cause the fracture immediately because it need some time to propagate. But the crack will propagate faster as it's getting deeper. When the crack become deep enough, it will break even under normal stress like 'waving in the air' because of stress concentration. By the way, since I am more or less professional in badminton, when I said 'waving', it's obviously not slight waving but with some speed and strength.

No matter how, I think you are right about that I should exchange the racket in the first place. I just want to make it clear that I didn't make up some story in order to avoid the charge. I guess I will accept my unluckiness although I believe I should be waived from that.

Best,

Wei-Ying