Customer service and complaints

When a company pays for something it does not owe, the letter says so in one word: kulanzhalber, as a goodwill gesture. The ending is a small piece of grammar worth owning. On its own, halber stands after its noun and takes the genitive: der Ordnung halber, for the record, der Einfachheit halber, for simplicity’s sake. Fused to a bare noun it becomes a single adverb, written as one word and never declined: sicherheitshalber, krankheitshalber, umständehalber. The article disappears, and with it the question of case. What remains gives a reason without naming anyone as responsible, which is exactly why complaints departments are fond of it. A letter that repairs your machine kulanzhalber grants the repair and, in the same breath, admits no defect and promises nothing for next time. Read it beside die Kulanzleistung and das Entgegenkommen, which say the same thing as nouns.