lucy24 - 3:23 am on Feb 1, 2013 (gmt 0)

Do you reply them or do you expect that they check former messages that you sent on which everything is written ?

If they checked former messages, they wouldn't be asking all over again would they?

To take your subject line at face value: Big businesses often have semi-automated responders that pick out key words or phrases from the e-mail and send a stock reply. So if the email contains the word "delivery" the business cranks out a reply that gives the delivery method and expected time.

This is infuriating-- to put it politely-- when the e-mail comes from an intelligent human* who is asking a more specific question. It doesn't become much less infuriating when the last line is something like "If this does not answer your question..." --and then the customer's follow-up email is fed into the self-same computer. But I guess that's a different thread.

If you're big enough that you can't function without automated replies, you can start the auto-response with something like "This is an automated reply. Your letter has not yet been read by a human." with some further blah-blah about how long to wait for the follow-up answer, if any. And then your humans (you personally?) can decide which questions need individual answers.


* Like everyone here, duh.