Phil (Medway Hosting) wrote:
>> Steve Wray wrote:
>>
>>> Thats why you assign someone to deal with that staff members email while
>>> they are away on vacation in the Bahamas.
>>>
>> I agree and in an ideal world that's what should happen. But it is not
>> always possible, due to bad planning, bad organisation et al. Also
>> handling someone else's email may be a privacy issue, and you need to
>> hand over account details (unless you forward).
>>
>
> No "buts" !!!
>
> If the emails are important enough then you make arrangements, or make sure
> you are near an internet cafe or take your laptop with you !!
>
> If I were looking to place an order, and I got an OOO, I would go elsewhere.
> No "if's" - no "buts". I am obviously unimportant to them. My opinion. And I
> know plenty of managers/directors/CEO's who think exactly the same way.
> OOO's demonstrate bad planning and/or service. ESPECIALLY when they get sent
> to lists such as this [1].
>
>
I would like to provide a counter example to this. Just the other day I
sent an email off to a small shop (actually just a guy that does some
importing/servicing) asking for his opening hours, I know for a fact
that this shop is the only place in the state that carries a particular
item I am looking for, I got an auto reply saying that he was on
holidays. I now know that I need to wait until he gets back before I
start getting worked up about being ignored. I guess he could have hired
someone to look after things for him but it is a small operation and I
personally (and I suspect most of his other customers) am happy enough
to wait.
If you do reasonable spam filtering and only reply to personal mail (see
the exim filter value "personal") then there is nothing inherently wrong
with autoreplies. Whether or not having a computer talk to customers on
your behalf is a good idea is another issue entirely (and isn't Exim
related). I don't see any reason why auto replying to suppliers, sub
contractors or personal friends would cause a problem. (If you were a
salesman trying to sell something and you got an auto reply would you
say "Well clearly this customer doesn't want to talk to me, I won't try
to sell to them again."?)
*Michael Heydon - IT Administrator *
michaelh@??? <
mailto:michaelh@jaswin.com.au>
