Formal apology letter for delay in delivery should be sent as soon as possible after the reported incident. The letter should not be sent unless you plan to take full responsibility, and in no way blame someone else or a customer. Sincere, well-worded apology letter can be effective in winning back customer’s confidence and patronage.

The apology letter for delay in shipment should only briefly explain why delay in delivery occurred, without going into unnecessary details about incident. Be aware that customer does not care about your internal organization, and the only thing important to him is to receive good/service on time and in a good order.

In the next part apology letter should indicate which steps company took to solve the issue. You can also provide indication when the shipment will be delivered.

At the end you should apologize for the inconvenient, express your concern and end on a positive note.

Here is the Template of Formal Apology letter for delay in delivery

Sender Name and Surname

Company Name

Address of the Sender

E-mail of the sender

DD/MM/YYYY

Recipient Name and Surname

[Company Name]

Address of the Recipient

City, State

REF: [Order / Reference Number]

Dear [Customer Name],

It is with regret that we received your letter on [Date] regarding an order you had placed for [list items] on [Date] that you still not received after a week / two weeks / one month.

On behalf of [Company Name] I would like to personally apologise for any inconvenience this has caused you. We appreciate you bringing this issue to the forefront so that now we can aim on working through it to prevent it happening to any of our other customers.

Here at [Company Name] we pride ourselves in providing only the best service for our cutomers so we were deeply disappointed to hear about your delay in delivery. I have personally made sure that your order is now on its way and will be with you in the next few days / week / fortnight.

We would like to apologize once again for the inconvenience. If you  have any further comments on this matter then feel free to contact us.

We thank you for your patience and support.

[Singature]

[Name Surnmane, Title]

[Contact Details]

Download the Template of Formal Apology letter for delay in delivery in MS Word