I am wondering if the past tense is used sometimes to increase the level of
politeness in a conversation which occurs in present form. For example:

> お待たせしました

In that case, under which circumstances the past form of the verb is used to
make the sentence polite? Also, which sort of difference it makes with the
present polite form of the verb?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-03-27T10:02:13.017
66280
2019-03-27T10:02:13.017
30049
question
politeness
Does using the past tense make the conversation more polite?