Please, No Delivery!

Remember my post about how annoying Auto Reply emails are?

Bloghouston.net recently had a great story illustrating several of my objections in action.

The Houston Chronicle offers an ‘e-edition’ of their paper, so Kevin decides to sign up.

During the sign up process, there’s a line for delivery address. Kevin doesn’t want the newspaper delivered to his house, so just to make sure that doesn’t happen, he calls The Chron. They assure him that info is for tracking, he won’t get the paper delivered, the delivery team won’t even have access to the information he’s providing, etc. etc.

Feeling confident, he finishes the order process, and after a short time, gets the following email:

Thank you!

Your request has been sent to our Subscriber Services department. If appropriate, one of our Subscriber Services representatives will contact you regarding your request via telephone or by e-mail if you provided an e-mail address. You can use our automated phone service 24 hours a day at 713-220-7211 or 1-888-220-7211. Our associates are available to help you on Monday through Friday from 5:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on weekends from 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m..

This annoys our friend Kevin, who apparently hates pointless auto replies as much as I do.

But the next email, which arrives just a few minutes later, really pushes him over the edge.

It begins:

Dear Kevin ,

Thank you for becoming a Houston Chronicle subscriber.

Your Houston Chronicle should begin arriving at your home within two business days of placing your order. If you haven’t received your Chronicle by that time, please let us know.

After a few more rounds of back and forth, Kevin got it all straightened out. The second email was not only an auto reply, but the wrong auto reply! Needless to say, Kevin wasn’t left with a lot of faith in the product he had just bought.

I feel your pain Kevin.