« Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right: the Conservatives and the electoral system: a summary | Main | Conservative Week: update »
October 05, 2005
Like smashing your head against a brick wall...
Continuing in my overwhelming atruistic vein this week, I took the time yesterday to personally inform some Conservative movers and shakers of the ERS report and my summary thereof. For the record, any Tory-inclined people you think should be made aware of these things, please tell them, or tell me to tell them.
Anyways, the first response that wasn't an out-of-office-auto-reply came from the office of Michael Howard (although technically I was after Oliver Heald). Were it not for the shameless website plug, it would've been one of the sweetest predictable fob-offs I've come across.
Thank you for your email to Michael Howard. I am replying on his behalf.
We very much appreciate you bringing this information to our attention, I can assure you it has been carefully noted. It was kind of you to write.
To keep up to date with the latest news, information and speeches at this week's Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, please visit our website - http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=conference.2005.page
Thank you once again for writing.
Yours sincerely,
Kate Marley
Office of the Rt Hon Michael Howard QC MP
Leader of the Opposition
Posted by pauldavies on October 05, 2005
Comments
I assume that the only way you know this wasn't an auto-reply was that it took some time to come back? And even then, it could be perfectly explicable as such if mail is being fetched over intermittent dialup.
Other than that, it's a perfect auto-response from the ruleset:
IF ($sender IS NOT IN @confWeekWhitelist) {
REPLY WITH auto-fob-off
}
It is astoundingly well written, mind. Next time I'm writing email auto-responses for contact centres I'll plagiarise without remorse.
Posted by: martinb at October 6, 2005 09:47 PM
I don't really KNOW that it wasn't just a fob-off, but it must have at least been filtered into the 'information provided' fob off as opposed to the simple, 'thanks for writing' fob off, and I'm not sure that can be filtered automatically
Posted by: Paul Davies at October 6, 2005 11:11 PM
We're democrats and believe in free speech, but we're also committed to civil and rational debate. We reserve the right to delete material posted to our site, but we hope and expect to exercise this right rarely if at all.
