Personally, I think that much of the time indirect letters are in fact a waste of time. If I get something in the mail and it doesn't say what I'm looking for in the first paragraph, I skip to the end to find it. Everything in between might as well not be there. Despite this, I do admit that for a company's correspondence it is necessary to not appear insulting or detached from the situation of its customers. Resultantly, its correspondence is less direct and definitely passive, but like I said, i think it's largely overused. A study done at the University of Ohio suggested the same. After two pretests and two experiments using negative letters the results show that buffers did not significantly affect college students' responses to simulated letters refusing credit and denying admission to graduate school. We just want to get the information we're looking for. So unless a company is rubbing the negative news in a person's face, they can give it directly and dispense with the unnecessaries. I'm for the direct approach.