Why do companies bother to provide an email address...

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w/o-talent

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if they are not going to answer their emails.

Trust me, I experience this all the time and it's not just with ukulele related companies. Every company's website has a "contact us" section on their website, and they always list an email address along with phone numbers. If I send an email to them I am not expecting a reply immediately, but I think it seems reasonable to get a reply within 24 hours. Kamaka, Kanilea, the UU guys, these are examples of companies who do respond and I think that's an indication of their level of service. But others, I'm not talking about a late response. No response at all.

Could it be something related to my email account that is keeping my email from reaching their inbox? Their promotional emails and invoices have no problem reaching my inbox.

Why don't I just call them? I have gotten to the point where I prefer to initiate contact by email to get an indication of their customer service. That is where my dollars are likely to be spent, and yes, my next contact would likely be a phone call. But I could give you a multitude of reasons why email makes sense, and the first reason is the company said contact us by email.

Here is my most recent example. I had a very simple question that could be answered quickly that I wanted to ask a number of well-known ukulele retailers and the manufacturer, and then compare the answers. Rather than calling each of these companies I thought it would be more efficient to type out one email and mass send it to them at the same time (since their websites said contact us by email). It's been more than a week. Number of replies....zero. Number of emails sent back to me as undeliverable....zero.

So if anyone reading this has a commercial website could you help me understand why a business person would tell potential customers to contact by email, and then never respond to their emails?

Thanks for allowing me to rant! :D
 
w/o-talent said:
if they are not going to answer their emails.

Trust me, I experience this all the time and it's not just with ukulele related companies. Every company's website has a "contact us" section on their website, and they always list an email address along with phone numbers. If I send an email to them I am not expecting a reply immediately, but I think it seems reasonable to get a reply within 24 hours. Kamaka, Kanilea, the UU guys, these are examples of companies who do respond and I think that's an indication of their level of service. But others, I'm not talking about a late response. No response at all.

Could it be something related to my email account that is keeping my email from reaching their inbox? Their promotional emails and invoices have no problem reaching my inbox.

Why don't I just call them? I have gotten to the point where I prefer to initiate contact by email to get an indication of their customer service. That is where my dollars are likely to be spent, and yes, my next contact would likely be a phone call. But I could give you a multitude of reasons why email makes sense, and the first reason is the company said contact us by email.

Here is my most recent example. I had a very simple question that could be answered quickly that I wanted to ask a number of well-known ukulele retailers and the manufacturer, and then compare the answers. Rather than calling each of these companies I thought it would be more efficient to type out one email and mass send it to them at the same time (since their websites said contact us by email). It's been more than a week. Number of replies....zero. Number of emails sent back to me as undeliverable....zero.

So if anyone reading this has a commercial website could you help me understand why a business person would tell potential customers to contact by email, and then never respond to their emails?

Thanks for allowing me to rant! :D
Click to expand...

Some email services screen out mass emails as potential spam. You may have to copy and paste the email, and send them out individually.
 
I know what you mean. I sent an email to a vendor over a week ago and still have not heard back. You might also consider the time period, if they're out attending a big event like NAMM, it might take them longer than normal to reply.

You definitely shouldn't send them as mass from one email. I learned by being the head of my high school reunion committee that the best way to avoid getting your email thrown in spam is to send an email individually and be sure the address has their name and bracketed email address; Person <email@address.com>.
 
Tigersister and kohanmike,

Thanks for the constructive answers. I have taken your advice and sent out individual emails. Let's see how it goes and I will let you know if if the response rate improves. Thanks again!
 
I, too, prefer communicating by e-mail, due to time differences, language barriers, and for having the figures documented. And like you, I have become frustrated with no replies from stores and makers, even though my mail would have imediately led to a purchase of up to $3000 USD. So taking five minutes to answer would have really paid off for them. And it really leaves me with a bad impression of a company for which, shortly before, I was euphorically willing to spend several thousands of dollars.

I'll have to add that, luckily, not all dealers/manufacturers are like that; some are very responsive, and with others, it's hit or miss. Also, I understand that companies are more reluctant to answer an e-mail if they figure that it is just a random inquiry or even a "mass sending" that might not lead to any purchase with them. So I guess it does depend on what the question was. But like I said, in my case it was basically "I would like to order, could you please tell me what it would cost, including shipping?" (directed towards companies with no price list online and no "Buy it now"-button).

Maybe some mails do end up in the spam folder by mistake, but companies which invite customers to inquire by e-mail should check on that, too. Anyway, it's that kind of poor customer service which makes me not want to do business with.
 
adding to what others have said about HOW you address the email...

When you send the email, if you put all the addresses together in the TO: box separated by commas, like this:

joe@company1.com, jack@company2.com, jimmy@company3.com

because they are in the TO: box, EVERY recipient can see every OTHER recipients' email address

As a business, If I saw a potential customer sending the SAME email to all of my competitors, which is EXACTLY what they WILL SEE, I might be offended and not bother to reply.

While it is convenient for the SENDER to do a mass emailing with numerous addresses in the TO box, since the invention of email, many greybeard-internet-oldtimers think it is bad 'internet etiquette' or netiquette to send a group email, in the TO box, to recipients who do not ALREADY know each other as well as the sender.

HOWEVER, if you put all the recipient email addresses in the BCC area, NOBODY can see who else you sent it to, but it will likely show 'undisclosed-recipients' in the TO area when they receive the message, for they will SEE that it was sent to THEM via BCC...

so use this info in whatever way makes sense to you....

and if none of this, or any other SPAM-filtering hoodoo as mentioned by folks in other posts here above, is going on, then maybe they are all EVIL and dont care about email.

or maybe they all did a google search or your name or email address before writing back to you, and found out some horrible thing about you online, and thus want to avoid contact.

To the OP: I'm not saying you ever did anything bad, as I don't know anything about you, and I am not implying anything, just trying to offer ideas.
 
Totally agree, if a business gives a contact email address, they should definately monitor it.
It does show/indicate their commitment (or not) to their customers.
 
Booli,

Greatly appreciate the effort you made to reply. All good thoughts. If the retailers googled me they would find no record of my credit card bouncing, and I assume that's what is most important to them. ;)

BTW, as I mentioned before I did send out individual emails as suggested. The builder replied within an hour. Nothing yet from the well-known retailers...
 
w/o-talent said:
Booli,

Greatly appreciate the effort you made to reply. All good thoughts. If the retailers googled me they would find no record of my credit card bouncing, and I assume that's what is most important to them. ;)

BTW, as I mentioned before I did send out individual emails as suggested. The builder replied within an hour. Nothing yet from the well-known retailers...
Click to expand...


No problem, glad to help.

Another thing I just remembered --

I have been told this on more than one occasion by a handful of folks (like Worst-Buy, Radio Shack, Walmart)(and I do NOT agree with this nonsense)...

Unless your email is from a recognizable domain, i.e., the dot-com part at the end, like gmail, yahoo, aol, earthlink, etc, and is instead from a private domain that is YOUR business or personal domain, i.e., boolideano.com, sutterphotography.com, etc, some (mostly ignorant) individuals will simply NOT reply because the are shell-shocked or over-conditioned (by their managers and ill-informed friends and co-workers) and afraid that OMG a VIRUS will kill their computer simply by READING an 'evil' email, and thus either manually flag it as SPAM or just delete it...

Many well-known companies have really stupid policies regarding email that have nothing to do with security and some folks feel that they can lose their job if they 'accidentally' open an email that 'can do bad things', and since they are not fully educated on 'how it works' for real, out of fear, they apply caution to the extreme.

I've worked in corporate IT for 30+, and the stories I could tell (but wont)...suffice it to say that this kind of thing happens ALL the time.

Sadly, mainstream TV news, (i.e., FOX NEWS, MSNBC and others) thrive on parasitic fear-mongering, and folks believe it since they simply dont know any better.

Not much can be done to help the willfully ignorant.

If I had a penny for every unanswered email....:music:
 
uke1950 said:
Totally agree, if a business gives a contact email address, they should definately monitor it.
It does show/indicate their commitment (or not) to their customers.
Click to expand...


Yes!

As a matter of practice, when I'm interested in an ebay item, before bidding, I will ALWAYS message the seller first...

If they do not reply, then I do NOT bid.

If they reply but do not answer my question, I try to rephrase it and send a reply (often sellers do not have US English as their first language and using simpler vocabulary can help), and if then after 3-4 exchanges back and forth they STILL dont understand me, or seem to be unwilling to provide a meaningful reply, then I do NOT bid.

Their response to the above tells me if they care about the sale and the customer, and thankfully eBay has LOTS of folks happy to reply AND take my money for the SAME product. I've been burned too many times by sellers with great feedback and then they totally drop the ball right after the sale. Life is too short to get wrapped up in this nonsense, so I avoid it as much as possible.

So yea, it's not just big retailers, but there are negligent/evil sellers EVERYWHERE. :(
 
I agree that this is a source of frustration for me as well. Never have sent bulk e-mail and my .com is well known.

E-mail is documentation. E-mail allows for time management on both ends. Verbal responses are often forgotten or incorrect. Answers get scrambled with verbals, but written can be referred to.
I donʻt do business over the phone, very rare, therefore a lot of companies can just miss my money. Responsive businesses end up happy to have me in their lineup of happy customers.

Youbetcha the ones who ignore request for e-mail instead of phone calls, well lets just say they can get an ear full if they call ʻanywayʻ. Some think itʻs cute - not.

I give 48 hr max depending on the nature of business, then I may try again. I have been known to call and ask them to check their inbox. Life is short and Iʻm not sitting around waiting. This week alone I have sent nine inquiries and had three responses. Whoʻs frustrated?

Business is business, my background is retail management and accounting, without customer service, the business will fail. Period. Small businesses or large, e-mail is the face of a customer, just as a ringing phone needs answering.

Any business with a website should be responsive to e-mail. All inquiries are portals to a sale, today and tomorrow. Ignore me for a low or midrange item, guarantee I take my big buying elsewhere. This is the first rule of retail, no customer - no business. Some are indeed so busy they slip a lot, but then I can send my business elsewhere, and eventually they slip and fall.

If it is important for a specific business to contact you, nag the daylights out of them. Daily. You are their job.
 
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