As a consumer, when a product is faulty or service is poor, you will seek to get it rectified. But I notice increasingly, you will not get an apology. Yes I get some lawyer has probably told the company or small business, you can’t say sorry or acknowledge fault - just resolve it with the consumer and move on.
But I think this is sad and sending a wrong message to future employers and indeed, employees. Mistakes are made. It is not just about fixing them, it is about accepting and acknowledging the mistake.
I would hope that most consumers would accept an apology and seek no further redress (obviously depending on what went wrong). Equally, it is not about laying blame and demanding an apology - just a simply sorry and we will fix that would be nice.
In some industries and political circles the ‘empty apology’ seems to be in vogue. It costs them nothing except face and does nothing to dilute their bottom line excepting indirectly from poor PR.
Those apologies do nothing to make a consumer whole unless it includes redress to make it right for the consumer. Sometimes nothing can make ‘it’ 100% right but consumers expect an effort to get as close as possible if not beyond in some manner.
Why? As a contrived example (that happens), if you purchased cooked food (cafe, takeaway, fast, whatever), bit into it and broke a tooth would an apology be all you expected for the tainted product?
For matters relating to consumers (say under the Australian Consumer Law), I would far prefer a swift, painless resolution with or without an apology, than an apology with drawn out, disputed process to get a resolution.
