To explain the process of elimination as requested in the title:

1. By failing to honor is the right idiom – So B, D, and E are out.
2. Between A and C , again the idiom ‘promise of keeping’ in C is wrong ; ‘promise to keep’ in A is right
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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.

"To Keep" is correct usage rather than "of keeping" or "in keeping". Moreover A is concise and in active voice.

Choice D is in passive voice (another drawback).

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

So A

A has no error as it is the most concise and succinct. "failure to" is also a correct idiom.


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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.

I dont see your point. It would actually be: "Because the bank failed..., the state's attorney general...", which is correct meaning.
Could anybody clarify?
Thanks.

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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For people who are confused about the correct answer, look up a concept called the infinitive of purpose. According to that concept, only 'to keep' is correct, so we are down to A and B. B incorrectly uses its failure of honoring.
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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.

anirudhsuhag.25, both of those interpretations are possible in theory, but only the second one makes sense. "Its" cannot refer to the attorney general; we'd need "his" or "her." Even if it could, how can we accuse someone by failing to honor a promise? #2 works because if the bank breaks its promise to customers, it was being deceptive.
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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 mikemcgarry,

Can you please assist with the POE of this one ?

Thanks

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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Imo A because of various parallelism markers with “to”. I nearly picked E but “of keeping” at the end of the sentence felt awkward.

Posted from GMAT ToolKit

"because of its failure in honoring" = because NOUN verb-ing (always wrong)
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attorney general accused the bank by xxxx – is not it wrong meaning ?
SO I rejected A,B



Wrong meaning :
"In ___ing" means, essentially, "something happens during the process of ___ing



Attorney accused the bank because of bank failure xxx and prefer E over D.

Can you help me to reject E and choose A without idiom concept.
AndrewN AjiteshArun egmat

can any1 tell how the meaning get changed by using "because of" as it was used in option D & E.

Hello again, imSKR. I will chime in on each answer choice below, just as you have done.


There is a key component to your simplified version that needs to be added back in. The attorney general accused the bank of doing something, in this particular case of engaging in deceptive business practices. The next part explains how so, answering the question of how the bank purportedly engaged in deceptive business practices. In pared-down form, the AG accused the bank of doing something by failing to honor its promise... That makes perfect sense. Choice (A) is clear and concise; choice (B) adds an unjustified its and changes failing to honor to an incorrect failure of honoring. There is no context in which you would use the latter.


In is the wrong explanatory word, and yes, in this construct, failure would at least be functional. The ending, of keeping, just gives us another easy target, enough to see off this answer choice.


Whenever you encounter extra words, you need to have a reason to justify their presence, and even without invoking idioms here, you should be questioning why the first its is absolutely necessary to convey the vital meaning of the sentence. Is there no better way to get to the nature of this accusal? Even because it had failed would be better. Since you cannot negotiate what is on the screen, you might at least consider placing this option on a lower tier. And if its promise... of keeping sounded off, then this would be one instance in which your ear would be guiding you in the right direction. All things considered, choice (E) incorporates a few suboptimal elements, parts that warrant a change, a hint that a better answer must exist somewhere else.

I hope that helps. Thank you again for drawing my attention to a new question (for me).

- Andrew
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