choster - 2:03 am on Oct 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

I visit lots of Contact Us pages with no intention of actually making contact. Frequently I am looking for locations/directions, branches/regional offices, or service areas. Since the Contact Us link is usually at the top of the page but the street address is at the bottom or omitted, I go there first. It's faster than waiting till the page loads, then scrolling down to see whether it's there or not.

By the way it's staggering the number of businesses where location is centrally important (e.g. a new condominium) yet it takes two or three clicks to find the address and a map.

At other times, I am curious to know whether I'm going to be paying to have something shipped from Melbourne, Florida or Melbourne, Victoria, and also see if express shipping will be in order.

Sometimes it's just curiosity. A residential address, for instance, might be a good thing when looking for authentic local crafts, and neutral for lawyers or writers, but I'm suspicious of investing in pharmaceutical laboratories at 4321 Meandering Brook Lane next to the elementary school. :-)

At still other times, I am planning to write an e-mail but check the contact page to see if the address I am using will be the right one. Probably 95% of mail sent to our webmaster@ account is actually intended for customerservice@ or sales@, so I want to avoid delays if possible while the staff forward my e-mail around to the right department.