Inbox

For a working professional the email inbox often provides a source of amusement...

I had emailed an enquiry to a company . Received a reply today that addressed some of the queries emailed . It had a rather baffling request "We request you to please re-send your enquiry on your business letterhead as it is our policy for new prospective clients. This may be sent either by fax to us at our fax number or by courier/post to the following address " !

Received an unsolicited email from a company that seems to provide website development and search engine optimization services . In the email the company ( I refer to them as 'the company' because the email was signed by 'The Sales Team' ) had mentioned that they had studied the website of SoulQuest and that they found scope for improvement . The 'improvement' being a form in the 'Contact us' section . When a person submits an enquiry a message would pop up saying " we will contact you in 48 hours" . Though the rest of the mail was pure jargon with over priced services I felt obliged to respond since someone there seems to have made the effort to study and site and suggest an improvement . So , I sent them an email thanking for the offer and that we would contact them in future if we felt a need for their services . Promptly I received a reply " we will contact you in 48 working hours " . 48 working hours is eternity in today's world.Assuming they work 8 hours a day it means a response time of 6-8 days depending on how many days a week they work . It's been 3 days since that message . It appears that they take the 48 working hours quite seriously :) They have an auto responder configured . Even someone who was writing in with a business enquiry would receive the same email . It's a counter productive message for a company operating in internet related services .
(in retrospect it seems that possibly the 'contact us' is the only section of a site they study to be able to write a message that sounds customized )