He said, “I’m really sorry, but "we’d lost" vs "we've lost" the information about your request.”

[Tony_M]

I wrote the following example.

One sales manager is complaining about their co-worker to another:

The support managers at work don’t listen to me at all. The other day I asked them not to call one of my potential clients. They assured me that the record about the request had been made in the client’s profile in our system. What do you think they did the following day? Yes, they called the guy and offered a bunch of useless stuff. When I was at the office, I confronted the manager who’d made the call. He said, “I’m really sorry, but we’d lost the information about your request.”

Is the present perfect possible in the last sentence?

Technically, the past perfect is probably a good choice, since the managers had lost the information first, and after that, one of them called the potential client. But on the other hand, the present perfect might sound like a general statement describing the action of losing and the whole situation. The last sentence doesn’t contain any time markers, which means that the action referred to by the present perfect happened at a certain point in the past without any details. The present perfect emphasizes the present relevance and completion in the past, but by itself doesn’t help establish the relative chronology of the events.

 

[5jj]

It's possible to make a case for the present pefect and past perfect - and for the past simple.

 

[Tony_M]

It's possible to make a case for the present pefect and past perfect - and for the past simple.

What would be the difference between the present perfect and the past perfect?

 

[5jj]

The one you suggested yourself.

 

[Tony_M]

The one you suggested yourself.

Let me go through it again.
The information was lost somewhere between the request and the conversation at the office. The support manager is effectively saying, "Sorry, but I don't know anything about the request not to call that potential client. We haven't got this information." So, probably, if we rephrase the past perfect, it will sound like, "Sorry, I didn't know anything about the request when I was calling the guy.", and the present perfect, "Sorry, I don't know anything about the request not to call even now." Would you agree?

 

[5jj]

The information was lost somewhere between the request and the conversation at the office. The support manager is effectively saying, "Sorry, but I don't know anything about the request not to call that potential client. We haven't got this information."

No. He says that they had lost it, which is not exactly the same as not knowing anything about it.

 

[emsr2d2]

The whole context is unclear. Is the manager who made the call one of the people you originally spoke to and who allegedly put the notes on the client's profile?
If not, he wouldn't say "We [had] lost" anything. He would say "I've no idea what you're talking about. There's nothing on the client's profile about not calling him."
If he was, he would have said something like "Sorry. I remember you saying something about that client but there were no notes on the profile about it. I'm not sure what happened to them."

 

[Tony_M]

The whole context is unclear. Is the manager who made the call one of the people you originally spoke to and who allegedly put the notes on the client's profile?
If not, he wouldn't say "We [had] lost" anything. He would say "I've no idea what you're talking about. There's nothing on the client's profile about not calling him."
If he was, he would have said something like "Sorry. I remember you saying something about that client but there were no notes on the profile about it. I'm not sure what happened to them."

That's very confusing.

 

[emsr2d2]

That's very confusing.

Why is it confusing? I made it clear what I found unclear about the original. Was the manager who made the call to the client one of the people you originally told (in person) not to call that client?