The SC Who Fell Into a Black Hole

[Dips]

This all happened last year. It began in on a spring day in May...

I answer the general email address at our company. Sometimes I will get a tech support question which I can't answer. If the user included their serial number, I just forward the question to the person who can answer it (usually Carl). If they don't, I ask them for it and tell them where to find it (by going to Help/About). When I get it back, I forward the email.

This customer wrote to me with a question about a hardware interface problem regarding margin settings. She didn't include her serial number, so I asked for it and told her where to find it.

As some of you know, a number of our customers make a big passive-aggressive show of how difficult it is to give me their serial number. I've posted some of the more interesting cases on this site.

This particular customer went that route. She was using an accessibility program made by another company (which I'm going to call OGS for Other Guys' Software). Since a third of our customers use OGS, we make sure our software works with it and one of our developers, Darlene (an OGS-user herself), wrote some scripts for it which make our software work pretty well with it.

Anyhow, the SC got crabby about having to give me her serial number and wrote back bitching quite a bit about how hard it was to get to Help/About using OGS. She even wrote, "You shouldn't make these things difficult for OGS-users. Some of your customers use OGS, you know" just to drive it home.

I figured she was just being crabby, but in case there was an issue, I informed her that she was the first person to have an issue with OGS and Help/About and asked her some questions about which version of OGS she was using and whether she had installed our OGS scripts. I also told her that I was letting Darlene know about the issue since Darlene was our OGS expert. I also told her that I was forwarding her hardware interface/margin setting question to Carl in tech support.

Later that day, Darlene told me that she had got back to the customer about the OGS issue and that there really wasn't one. Darlene was familiar with this customer and told me that she liked to find excuses to whine. Darlene took her through basic OGS operation and all was fine.

I didn't hear back from Carl, which isn't very unusual.

The customer never replied to me, but I wasn't expecting her to since my last message informed her that Carl and Darlene would take care of her.

Life went on.

Spring turned to summer.

Summer turned to fall.

And one day in early November, I received a response to the last message I sent the SC in May. It's best if I don't try to paraphrase it. So here is a slightly edited version...

"Hi,

Have you read my original email? How can you believe I am having trouble with Help/About using OGS? I am having trouble with margins, not with using OGS.

Does [your company] always take six months to respond to requests for assistance?"

It was six months later. At first I had no idea what she was talking about. Luckily my last message (the one where I asked her about her OGS settings and told her that Carl and Darlene would take care of her) was there when I scrolled down past her signature, complete with the May date I sent it.

Wait. What?

Did she only just now read the email I sent in May and think it was a response to her original question regarding hardware and margins? Did she think that I just sent it now in November?

Nobody could be that stupid. Even if they were, who would wait six months for a response before complaining?

Then I saw it. The cc: field had her boss's name in it. Hmmm. Could the SC, perhaps, be up against a six month old deadline and needed somebody to blame for the fact that she wasn't going to finish her project in time?

It was only a guess; I honestly didn't know if that was the case but I made sure her boss got a cc of my reply...

"Good morning

I am not tech support and could not answer your question about margins, which is why I forwarded your message to the correct tech support address ####@###### and notified you that I had done so on May 4. Are you saying that tech support never replied to you and you are just now letting us know? Lots of things can happen to emails. If you don't receive a timely response to an email, you need to let us know about it right away so that we have a chance to respond appropriately. Please be assured that we always try to answer emails in timely fashion. I apologize that yours appears to have got lost.

Since you reported a problem reading Help/About with OGS after I asked for your serial number, I also forwarded your message to Darlene, who writes our OGS scripts. Since we designed Help/About to be compatible with programs like OGS, we need to know about any problems so that we can fix them.

I'm going to forward your margin question to tech support again. If you don't hear back from them by tomorrow at the latest, please be sure to email them directly at ####@#######. You can also contact tech support by phone by calling ###-###-#### and pressing 0. Tell the person who answers the phone your serial number, #####, and ask for tech support."

And, yes, I did make sure that Carl got my message and he made sure to cc the reply to me (and the SC's boss)...

Hi SC. I am not at all sure why you didn't get an answer to your message in May. I have given you what I consider and I think you do as well good tech support for years. You certainly know that is not our style.
Your message may have been caught in a spam filter, my reply may likewise never reached you for the same reason or god only knows what happened.

I am sorry for that. Please this could happen in the future due to circumstances beyond either of our control. Do not wait six months to inquire again as to an answer, feel free to bug us.

Now on to your answer.

[technical blar omitted here]

Carl"

[wagegoth]

I just love cc's and bcc's on email.

[air914]

ugh those people annoyed me!!! We had that happen often where I worked once. And we asked people "DID you get a Confirmation e-mail that we received your e-mail? No you didn't? Then we didn't receive it. You've waited XX days (weeks, months) to check back on the issue? You didn't follow polices & procedures written down and handed to you and also available to you anytime online? You didn't call us? Then stop complaining that we kept charging you and sending you your product. That's what YOU asked us to do. YOU didn't do anything except send an e-mail which is NOT acceptable cancellation (and that is written in the policies & procedures & on the form that you signed to have your card automatically charged) - and you never checked up on it at all. NOT our fault. Yes you have to pay. "

BTW - an automatic e-mail confirmation was sent out whenever someone sent us an e-mail from the website. We also had an automatic reply if you sent directly to any of our addresses. AND, if we couldn't answer your question right away, we sent you an e-mail letting you know we received the e-mail you sent and would get back to you as soon as possible with an answer, although that may take 5-7 days. So if you got none of these confirmation e-mails, we did NOT receive your e-mail.