It Turns Out Plenty Of People Reply To DoNotReply.com
from the reading-comprehension-skills dept
It's always amusing when errant emails get sent around. For example, we still get plenty of emails every day from people angry at Amazon.com for the way Amazon signs people up for their Amazon Prime program (the way it's billed on credit cards, we're the first Google search on the name, and people who don't read, somehow think that we, at Techdirt, billed them). Slashdot points us to an amusing article about the guy who owns DoNotReply.com, which is now set up as a blog highlighting some of the more ridiculous emails he gets. The reason he gets so many emails is many systems just put "donotreply" in the "from" field, and people still reply -- and it all goes to this guy. Most interesting is that he's given up explaining this to people (except in a few exceptional cases), because they tend to just get angry at him.
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Filed Under: do not reply, email, reply
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throw aways
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Amazon Prime? It's not rocket science
In fact, here's the text copied from my Amazon buyer page:
Your membership is set to not upgrade automatically. To continue receiving Amazon Prime benefits without interruption, please click "Upgrade automatically" below.
Your trial membership will not upgrade to a full membership automatically on March 28, 2008.
This is not difficult. It might be nice if Amazon sent out a reminder email, warning me that my free trial membership was about to expire.
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Re: Amazon Prime? It's not rocket science
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To the idiots who didn't read the post...
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Anyway, there is no reason to use "donotreply.com" in an address. Those mail administrators should be shot in the face. If you don't want to accept replies, set it to 'donotreply' in the user and append your domain as the host part. Then don't create an actual account on your server that uses that name and all of those messages will bounce or be dumped. Problem solved.
So really, as dumb as it is that people might reply to these messages - the administrator's responsible for creating those emails are far stupider.
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Re:
in any case, its probably just best to actually set up a "donotreply" account and rig it to just continually delete emails it receives.
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@AC #7
"For example, we still get plenty of emails every day from people angry at Amazon.com for the way Amazon signs people up for their Amazon Prime program (the way it's billed on credit cards, we're the first Google search on the name, and people who don't read, somehow think that we, at Techdirt, billed them)."
THAT is what Anne, Rose, etc. were referring to, dumbass.
Anyway, I read about the donotreply.com issue a few days ago and you're right with the rest of your post. It's quite amusing to me, and just another example of people trying to blame the messenger for their own incompetence. No competent sysadmin would use a 3rd party domain for message replies, they would set up e.g. donotreply@theirdomain.com and then set the address to redirect to /dev/null.
Since they're too stupid to do that, the owner of donotreply.com is well within his rights to point out the incompetence of the companies involved. The companies should just count their lucky stars that the guy receiving the emails is honest and not interested in selling them on to identity thieves and the like.
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Some senders plaintively, cluelessly whine that they don't have the resources to handle such traffic, as it eludes their feeble comprehension that the only correct answer to such a situation is "don't generate it".
ANYONE using a "donotreply" address on their outbound mail does not deserve the privilege of sending mail on our network. Anyone choosing to do so anyway does fully deserve all the pain, embarrassment, etc. that they're begging for.
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Re: "our network"
Rich, you must be working at a top 500 company running full speed ahead and don't put up with any crap. You are right that many so called system admins don't deserve that title. They sure keep our life interesting though.
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You should make a correction...
"For example, we still get plenty of emails every day from idiots angry at Amazon.com for the way Amazon signs people up for their Amazon Prime program."
I have never had a free trial of anything that made it as clear that you would be billed after 30 days nor made is as easy to opt-out. You don't have to call anyone or send an email to anyone. You just go into your amazon account and click a button. I'm surprised these morons know how to compose an email.
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The fault lies with the idiots who send with "do not reply" in their "from:"
of the tactic. It is certainly not a accepted practice,
and is illegal in many states.
--
FF
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nothing
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