Sentence Correction

Even though it was not illegal for the bank to share its customers' personal and financial information with an outside marketing company in return for a commission on sales, the state's attorney general accused the bank of engaging in deceptive business practices by failing to honor its promise to its customers to keep records private.

a) by failing to honor its promise to its customers to keep

b) by its failure of honoring its promise to its customers to keep

c) in its failing to honor its promise to its customers of keeping

d) because of its failure in honoring its promise to its customers in keeping

e) because of its failure to honor its promise to its customers of keeping

OA: A

There are multiple mistakes in each option.

b) by its failure of honoring its promise to its customers to keep - by its failure of honoring is not idiomatic and is wordy.

c) in its failing to honor its promise to its customers of keeping - in its failing to honor, of keeping both are unidiomatic.

d) because of its failure in honoring its promise to its customers in keeping - because of its failure in honoring - wordy, in keeping - must be to keep is wordy.

e) because of its failure to honor its promise to its customers of keeping - because of its failure

this problem is very idiom heavy - there are three

Fail ... to ... do something (eliminates b and c)

promise .. to keep (eliminates e)

engaging.. by [doing something] (elminates b)

smodak wrote:Even though it was not illegal for the bank to share its customers' personal and financial information with an outside marketing company in return for a commission on sales, the state's attorney general accused the bank of engaging in deceptive business practices by failing to honor its promise to its customers to keep records private.

a) by failing to honor its promise to its customers to keep

b) by its failure of honoring its promise to its customers to keep

c) in its failing to honor its promise to its customers of keeping

d) because of its failure in honoring its promise to its customers in keeping

e) because of its failure to honor its promise to its customers of keeping

OA: A

Where is this problem from? I personally don't like it much. Granted, A is the only option that doesn't contain idiomatic errors.

But answer choice A is not 100% clear, either. It could mean that THE ATTORNEY fails to honor the bank's promises. Of course this meaning isn't intended, but from the way the sentence is constructed, it could be read in such a way, couldn't it?

All the other answer choices, as grammatically flawed as they may be, provide an unambiguous meaning of the sentence by using "its" before the word failure/failing.

Am I missing something?

Even though it was not illegal for the bank to share its customers' personal and financial information with an outside marketing company in return for a commission on sales, the state's attorney general accused the bank of engaging in deceptive business practices by failing to honor its promise to its customers to keep records private.

isn't it confusing that whether "by failing" refers to the bank or to the attorney. Logically it should refer to bank but I eliminated options A and B thinking that its use is ambiguous.

jaymw wrote: Where is this problem from?

GMATPrep

smodak wrote:

jaymw wrote: Where is this problem from?

GMATPrep

I found a link which contains some good explanations for this -at least to me- weird GMATPrep problem.

https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/eve ... -t844.html.