I've held off on writing this one to let the guilty party have time to come good - but time has been called on my patience.
I am subscribed to Auto Express, which arrives through my letterbox every week. Normally it is a good read - it keeps me up-to-date with all the new cars that I can't afford!
So, come the edition for the week commencing April 6th and I noticed a couple of errors.
The first was in a review for the Toyota IQ, bemoaning the fact that it has no luggage cover. Well, it does, but it is hidden under the boot floor.
The second was in an article about the UK's car tax system which failed to tell readers that two of the new tax brackets were being held at a lower rate for the next two years, with quite a hike in price after that. Pretty important I feel as the article advised folk to buy cars in those brackets for the 'lower' rate of tax.
So I sent two separate emails addressed to the relevant contacts listed at the front of the magazine.
In both I was polite, informal and in the cases of the second article expressed that I was going on information gathered from a number of sources which might be wrong and Auto Express might be right.
If you follow this blog you will know what is coming next.
Yep, no reply. Nothing. Not even an auto-response acknowledgement that they received my emails [I'm sure they did, my University's email system lets me know of any 'un-deliverable' mailings].
There have been two editions of the mag since I sent the emails - and there is no mention of any 'corrections' to the original stories.
Of course, their email system might have been down for a while or giving them problems - if this is the case a message in the mag apologising for any inconvenience would be nice.
So Auto Express, as I have said on this blog before; do you ignore a ringing phone? No? So if you are going to list your email addresses I assume you are inviting communications via that medium - an assumption based on the fact you have an 'email of the week' on the 'readers comments' page - so reply to them. Not to do so is bad for business.
It is also rude.
Footnote, August 4 2009 - it seems poor, or no, response to emails is [still] a widespread problem, see Businesses still taking days to respond to website enquiries
I am subscribed to Auto Express, which arrives through my letterbox every week. Normally it is a good read - it keeps me up-to-date with all the new cars that I can't afford!
So, come the edition for the week commencing April 6th and I noticed a couple of errors.
The first was in a review for the Toyota IQ, bemoaning the fact that it has no luggage cover. Well, it does, but it is hidden under the boot floor.
The second was in an article about the UK's car tax system which failed to tell readers that two of the new tax brackets were being held at a lower rate for the next two years, with quite a hike in price after that. Pretty important I feel as the article advised folk to buy cars in those brackets for the 'lower' rate of tax.
So I sent two separate emails addressed to the relevant contacts listed at the front of the magazine.
In both I was polite, informal and in the cases of the second article expressed that I was going on information gathered from a number of sources which might be wrong and Auto Express might be right.
If you follow this blog you will know what is coming next.
Yep, no reply. Nothing. Not even an auto-response acknowledgement that they received my emails [I'm sure they did, my University's email system lets me know of any 'un-deliverable' mailings].
There have been two editions of the mag since I sent the emails - and there is no mention of any 'corrections' to the original stories.
Of course, their email system might have been down for a while or giving them problems - if this is the case a message in the mag apologising for any inconvenience would be nice.
So Auto Express, as I have said on this blog before; do you ignore a ringing phone? No? So if you are going to list your email addresses I assume you are inviting communications via that medium - an assumption based on the fact you have an 'email of the week' on the 'readers comments' page - so reply to them. Not to do so is bad for business.
It is also rude.
Footnote, August 4 2009 - it seems poor, or no, response to emails is [still] a widespread problem, see Businesses still taking days to respond to website enquiries
No comments:
Post a Comment