Friday, July 20, 2007

Curse of the Spam Filter?

So, is it me, or is it Spam Filtering?

Being a decent (ahem) individual, I came across three instances recently where I saw that people had issues with their websites and contacted them:

www.marine-audio.com - they had a sponsored link on a Google page for a product I was interested in, but the link didn't actually work. I emailed them out of kindness (oh alright and a 'completer finisher' personality trait) and they fixed the link.


www.scribble.co.uk
- hand written greeting card company. My complaint was that whilst in China I got a message from their card processor Netbanx saying that I couldn't pay because of the country I was located in. Trying from Singapore met the same result so I emailed them to suggest that expats might actually find that their service was quite useful so they might want to change card processors. Currently their site says they're 'undergoing site maintenance for several weeks' so they may have bigger fish to try.

www.vault.com - This is a service that I actually pay to subscribe to - every time I go in, it popped up a 'Go to Vault China' link which didn't work. I emailed them. They fixed it.

So, it is me? Is it spam filtering? Is it the death of common courtesy? In all three cases there was a business benefit to them following up on my email (and in one case I am a real, live paying customer) and yet no-one thought to flash me a 'Thanks for your email'. For shame.

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