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

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.

promise in / of keeping are just not idiomatic=> "promise to its customers to keep" is the correct version. This leaves us with A and B.

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

the state's attorney general accused the bank of engaging in deceptive business practices (how?) by + ing verb. A is correct.
If you want to say "how" a thing happened, in this case "how they did those practices" the construct in A is correct.

'Promise to' is correct compared to promise in, of
and A is concise compared to B

So A

In addition to above statements pertaining to the correct usage of infinitive "to keep" vs "keeping" (gerund), introduction of "because" changes the meaning. Try to read back the option D, it would mean "Because the bank failed to keep its promise, it is engaging in deceptive business practices". Using the expression "by failing to honour..." the phrase "deceptive business" is properly qualified.

two idioms tested in this:

FAILIURE TO X....and PROMISE TO Y....

moreover you may notice that because of too many pronoun (ITS) and prepositional phrases..all other options are unnecessarily wordy.
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Hi Experts,

'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.'

In the sentence above, I feel that usage of 'by' had two separate meanings:
1. The state's attorney general accused by failing to honor its promise...
2. The bank engaged in deceptive business practices by failing to honor its promise...

Can you please explain if this is not the case. I have my exam scheduled for day after tomorrow, so a quick response would be very much appreciated.

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 - Correct

b) by its failure of honoring its promise to its customers to keep - failure of honoring is unidiomatic

c) in its failing to honor its promise to its customers of keeping - incorrect idiom: 'promise of keeping' is wrong

d) because of its failure in honoring its promise to its customers in keeping - change in meaning as explained in E

e) because of its failure to honor its promise to its customers of keeping - incorrect idiom: 'promise of keeping' is wrong ; change in meaning: the correct meaning is what appears in the original sentence, namely, that the failure to honor promises WAS the deceptive business practice. choice e, with its use of 'because', implies that the failure to keep promises LED TO (other) deceptive business practices. remember that you have to interpret words like 'because' very, very literally.

Answer A
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Hi Poorvasha!

Carolyn from Magoosh here - I'll step in for Mike

Let's go through the answer choices here:

(A): No obvious problem

(B): "By its failure" is an incorrect construction here - when we use "by" to refer to an action like this, we need the following word to be a verb, like "by failing". Also, "its failure of honoring" is also incorrect - when we talk about a failure to do something, we need to say "failure TO ...". So here, we would want to say "its failure TO honor". So eliminate B.

(C): "In its failing" is, first of all, a bit awkward and excessively wordy. Then, "its promise of keeping" is incorrect - when we talk about a promise to do something, we want to say "promise TO ...". So here, we need to say "promise to keep", not "promise of keeping". Eliminate C.

(D): Here we have two errors that have already come up: "failure IN honoring" (should be failure TO honor"), and "promise IN keeping" (should be promise TO keep"). Eliminate D.

(E): Again, the issue here is in "failure OF keeping". This should be "failure TO keep". Eliminate E.

So our answer is (A) Does that help?

-Carolyn
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"because of its failure in honoring" = because NOUN verb-ing (always wrong)
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