Some months ago I was sent an invitation from a singles web site I’m a member of. It invited me to a Gay Ski Week. It assured me I could get to the annual Gay Ski Week in New Zealand at a great price plus I’d have a great time while I was there. Plus I was offered an Early Bird discount if i booked my time at the Gay Ski Week before a certain date.

I am not gay.

The following day I received an email deeply apologising for the error which was as result of a computer breakdown of some sort. They admitted they were in error etc. Apparently I was not the only person to receive this invitation by mistake.

Fortunately I have a sense of humour but I can imagine some number of heterosexual recipients would not have seen the funny side.

Two things could be said about this. The first is the need to apologise as soon as any mistake is discovered. The second would be an offer of some sort to compensate for any hard feeling.

In this case the apology did come but I can’t remember any offer of compensation. As I said I do have a sense of humour so to be honest I didn’t really need any kind of offer for compensation. But I would’ve thought an offer of some kind would’ve been nice.

It gets back to that concept of good will. People can accept mistakes will happen but in my mind some, even small, offer of compensation would be the order of the day. This could be in the form of a discount or some small service offered for free or whatever else they could think of.

I have no idea how the Gay Ski Week went but a small gift for the mistake would’ve been nice.