Wednesday, Debtember 04, 2024
Why list a phone number if no one at your company even knows how to deal with the notification?
Sigh.
Yet another email for Sean Conner arrived.
- From
- Consumer Support <consumersupport@XXXXXXXXXX>
- To
- sean.conner@gmail.com
- Subject
- XXXXXXXXXX - Registration Inquiry
- Date
- Mon, 2 Dec 2024 08:42:38 -0800 (PST)
847-XXXXXXXX
Ref:XXXXXXXXXXX
CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE This message and any included attachments are from XXXXXX Corporation and are intended only for the addressee. The information contained in this message is confidential and may constitute inside or non-public information under international, federal, or state securities laws. Unauthorized forwarding, printing, copying, distribution, or use of such information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the addressee, please promptly delete this message and notify the sender of the delivery error by e-mail or you may call XXXXXX's corporate offices in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A at (+1) (816)XXXXXXXX.
And that's it. It's lucky there was no personal information included or this company could be in violation of HIPAA.
On a whim, instead of simply deleting the email and going on with my life, I decided to do The Right Thing™, and inform the sender (which was the company itself) of the delivery error by calling the given phone number.
It took several calls to resolve. No one at XXXXXX knew how to directly handle my call. Two people I talked to attempted to transfer me to what they felt was the appropriate department, only to have the transfer fail and I had to call back and navigate the automated phone system yet again (in which I had to listen carefully, becauese the options had changed on October 20th; a refreshing change from the “recently changed” most such systems claim).
The final person still had no idea how to handle the call, but they put me on hold, talked to what they thought was the appropriate department, and it was resolved.
And yes, it was a Sean Conner to whom the message was intended—not just this Sean Conner.
The only thing I want to say is to corporations who have a similiar message—if you are going to bother putting a phone number to inform of email delivery errors, you may want to make an option that is obvious who handles such situations. Or just don't bother with a phone number at all. Or just say something like “just delete this and move on with your life. We don't care enough to handle this properly,” unlike the other email I received today from another medical company which had an email address I could send a notification to.
Sheesh.
A real real-time chess board
Two years ago I talked about a spherical chess variant. Now, I want to mention real time chess, where players can move their pieces at will, with the only limit being once a piece is moved, you can't move it for five seconds. And there's no check or checkmate—you win by capturing the opponent's king.
The problem with real time chess is that you really can't play it on a real board, since you would have to trust the other player not to move a piece immedately after moving it (and the other player would have to trust you to do the same). That is, unless you have a special chess set built just for the game. It's a cool set—the board and all the pieces are metal, with each square having an electromagnet to hold the piece down, and LED lighting to indicate when a piece can and can't move. But no mention of the cost—it's probably one of those “if you have to ask, you can't afford it” type things.
