Notes meant for you stay out of your letter

A letter can come back with a thing or two for you to check first: whether the name on a notice is really yours, a date only you can confirm, a reference to fill in. Those are written for you, not for the company. They used to arrive inside the letter itself, above “Dear …”, so copying the letter, saving the PDF or sending it would have passed them straight to the company.

Your checks sit above the letter now

They have a panel of their own, and it says who it is for:

Before you send (only you can see this)

Under that it says they are not part of the letter and are never sent to the company. They are checks on the facts, not legal advice, so you will not find a view there on whether your case is strong.

The letter box holds the letter and nothing else, labelled as exactly what the company will receive. Copy it, download it or send it, and that is what goes.

Wherever you read the letter

The panel is in the composer while you work on the letter, and on your case whenever you open a letter again. It used to appear only once the send dialog was open, so anyone who copied the letter out or saved the PDF never saw the checks at all.

A check that has to be sorted first

Some checks are more than a nudge. Those are marked “Fix before sending”, with an icon and the words as well as the colour, and each one has an “I’ve fixed this” button. Press Send with one still open and nothing goes anywhere:

This letter came with a check that has to be sorted before it goes. Look at “Before you send” above the letter, fix it, then mark it fixed. Your letter is saved.

Nothing is rewritten and nothing is lost. You sort the check, mark it fixed, and carry on from where you were.

The greeting

If you started a case by pasting a company’s web address, the letter could open with “Dear https://www.example.co.uk/ Customer Relations,”. New letters use the company’s name instead, or a name made from the address where we do not know the company.