How Should I Respond to a Breach of Contract Notice Reply

My question involves business law in the state of: Virginia
I sent a breach of contract notice to a unemployment benefits representative business that I found on the internet. I paid $400.00 for a unemployment representative to help my wife with her unemployment appeal. We live in Virginia and the business is based in Pennsylvania. The representative did not do her job correctly as she stated in her email she was going to do. She committed procedure errors that ended up with her not being able to get the transcripts of the appeals examiner's hearing. Without them the representative could not write a written argument. As a result my wife stood no chance of winning her appeal. So I sent a breach of contract notice to the business without asking for any compensatory damages yet. I gave them 30 days to respond. They sent me a check for $400.00 which covers the cost of their service. I have not wrote back and accepted this amount as a settlement. I just got the check a few days ago. I want to ask for a lot more than $400.00. I want to ask for the full amount of my wife's unemployment benefits which she stood a better chance of getting with a competent representative. The amount I am talking about is $4,070.00. We did not just suffer a loss of $400.00 but also a loss of my wife not getting her unemployment benefits. How should I respond? Is their a legal document that I should send the business asking for the $4,070.00? What should I say in response to their letter and check for $4,070.00? Should I send the $400.00 check back with my response? I was going to ask for the $400.00 along with the $4,070.00. Please don't tell me I can't get this amount by asking for it. Let's focus on how I should approach this and not about if I will get this amount or not. Don't answer the question if you are going to take that approach.

You can write a letter and demand whatever you want. If you want more than the $400 refund you already got then I suggest you not cash the check the business sent to you. Of course whether the business will pay what you demand is impossible to say. Note that if you sued the business for the claimed loss of the benefits you would need to prove that it was more likely than not that your wife would have won the appeal. If you can't prove that, then getting a refund of the $400 paid for the service is the best you’ll get.

As for the responses you get here, you can’t make people post the way you want. People will respond to your fact pattern with any comments they think will apply and that might be helpful. Some of them you may not like and you are free to disregard them. But you don’t control who posts here, and statements like “Don’t answer the question if you are going to take that approach” tends to rub people the wrong way. Don’t be surprised if you get rather acidic replies as a result.

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Quoting russharv63

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What should I say in response to their letter and check for $4,070.00?

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Same answer I gave you on the other site. Shotgunning multiple websites isn't going to change things for you.