Argument17 Thrive小组第3次作业 求拍

vic_rainUID: 2304309

TOPIC: ARGUMENT17 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Walnut Grove town newspaper.

"Walnut Grove's town council has advocated switching from EZ Disposal (which has had the contract for trash collection services in Walnut Grove for the past ten years) to ABC Waste, because EZ recently raised its monthly fee from $2,000 to $2,500 a month, whereas ABC's fee is still $2,000. But the town council is mistaken; we should continue using EZ. EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ-which, like ABC, currently has a fleet of 20 trucks-has ordered additional trucks. Finally, EZ provides exceptional service: 80 percent of respondents to last year's town survey agreed that they were 'satisfied' with EZ's performance."
WORDS: 396          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2008-3-2 下午 06:30:12

By citing a last year's survey and making a comparison between EZ and ABC's trash collection services, the author recommend that Walnut Grove should continue contracting with EZ rather than ABC in contrast to the town council's advocacy. Although this argument seems well presented on the surface, close scrutiny on it reveals several flaws, which renders it not well reasoned thus unconvincing.

First, the mere fact that EZ collects trash twice does not necessarily indicate EZ's services are better than ABC's. Lacking evidence it is entirely possible that collecting trash once a week is far beyond enough to dispose all trash in Walnut Grove. For that matter, EZ's trash collection services twice a week nearly has no advantage over ABC's but waste human resources and higher expenses on contract.

Secondly, the author fails to consider whether the citing survey is statistically reliable. In fact, for a survey to be accurate, it must be random and include a broad cross-section of population. As no evidence was offered to validate this, it is possible that only people who are satisfied with EZ's performance or who are not unsatisfied with ABC's had respond with the survey. For that matter, perhaps actually most people preferred ABC's services to EZ's while they were not acquired as samples by the survey, and could not be representative of people as a whole.

Thirdly, the author also fairs to consider another fact that EZ ordered additional trucks. No evidence offered to justify that when will these additional truck arrives and for whom these trucks will work. We just don’t know anything about these questions. Then it possible that these additional would not arrive to be ready to work in near future, or perhaps these trucks are not prepared for working for Walnut Grove's services at all even though arrive at last.

Finally, even if the author can substantiate all above assumptions, I still remain unconvinced that the town should continue using EZ as a result. We do not no any other companies for providing trash collection services similar with EZ and ABC. Perhaps there are other these potential companies which work better than EZ and yet at a lower price on the contrary.

In sum, this argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it the arguer should supply evidence that EZ's twice a week's services is indispensable at least, and its ordered additional trucks would immediately work for the town’s trash collection. To better evaluate this argument, it would be very useful to obtain opinions from individuals that have some experience with both EZ and ABC, and obtain other competitive crash collection companies’ information about price and service quality.