[Closed] Companies that have 'contact us' forms on their websites...

Yes.

And any company who just have that on their website and no email/phone number deserve to go bust

No I answer them, was it our website?

To be honest, I am wishing I had expanded this onto the point of companies not reply to emails/social meedja full stop.

I know phone calls are usually better, but if you're an online company then replying to emails etc might be a good idea.

As for social media...

Why do so many companies seem more than happy to use it as a platform to pump out all the wonderful things they are doing, yet never seem to realise it's supposed to be an two-way process?

...for example:

Amazeballz Bikez: Great news! We will soon be shipping our chocolate flavoured 5 wheeled bikez soon!

Me: Sounds awesome! Do you know if they will come with handlebars?

Amazeballz Bikez: We'll also have some glass tyres available as well.

Me: That's great, but about the handlebars?

...and so forth without ever getting a reply to a query that's related to their own announcement.

It's just annoying that the whole point of modern social media is to allow improved interaction. If you don't want this, then just go old school and put out a press release and stick it in the newsagents window...ha!

Ah so it's you asking about a cross bike. To be fair I'd probably "accidentally" hit delete if I was them 😛

Have you ever thought they are just ignoring you Jamie
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Ah so it's you asking about a cross bike. To be fair I'd probably "accidentally" hit delete if I was them

Heh.

Have you ever thought they are just ignoring you Jamie

Quite possibly....and admiringly consistently.

I hate them because it seems so open ended, and somehow worse than email although I'm not sure why I think email is better...?

I dislike them most for things like campsites, small B&Bs and hotels for checking availability. I know some of these are quite small operations but that just makes me even more pessimistic about the chances of a sharpish reply. When others let you check straight away those get pretty much instantly forgotten for me.

I hate them because it seems so open ended, and somehow worse than email although I'm not sure why I think email is better...?

At least with sending an email you have a record of when you sent something.

At least with sending an email you have a record of when you sent something.

That's probably it. The forms just seem a bit non-committal.

M&S do and you normally get a reply within an hour.

Doesn't matter really if it's a small company we only ever read them while on the shitter....
Only reply if it's going to be a long one

Local authorities etc. are the worst

luckily my current one had a proper email address too, proved very useful when I turned up at court to challenge my council tax with printouts of the four emails I had sent to them telling them they were wrong!

It's a Googleranking track IIRC.

Doesn't mean they GAS about the email, sorry.

Very occasionally, you can do a whois lookup against the domain name and mail the registered contact off that.

no, ours goes to the sales group email so at least 5 people have to ignore it.

You will need at least three fulltime employees to answer a phone line with any reliability but a sole trader can respond to emails on an evening after theyve been doing whatever service they provide through the day.
Put a few boxes in the email form to better sort the enquires seems sensible?

having a contact us form rather than a raw e-mail address or mailto link on your page cuts down on a hell of a lot of spam. It's the kind of thing lazy cheap web developers do for small businesses

Depends normally wouldn't buy from a co that doesn't have an address and phone number but not really put off by contact forms

Always assumed some co's use them to cut down on spam as above

Usually do a screen grab before hitting send and then paste into an email to myself so I have a record of sent and date - doesn't stop some businesses from not bothering to answer though - tough on them if can't be bothered to retain existing customers

I've always assumed the contact form was to avoid spam. It's a lot easier to send multiple spam to an email address than to repeatedly hack a contact form. I don't mind which a company uses so long as I don't have to phone them. I'm working during the day and don't have time, and phone calls at any time usually mean ages in a queue to speak to somebody who doesn't know the answer; much better to send the question and it can be forwarded to the right person for a response.

But I get very annoyed at companies who send me an email without an address to reply to. That's just rude.

Just put your email address as an image - less spam, but people can just email you by that do fashioned typing it in thing.

Every company should have phone and email on every page of website IMO.

If you have that twitface and footbook thing called social media, blooming engage with people on it, make it useful not just 'ooooh, gimme more money' posts.

Whatever the spam stuff, it is also an easy way to cut down on complaints as you can:

A) Bet that a few people will be deterred by using a form rather than email.

B) Claim that the 'system' went down and lost the message.

C) Just ignore a fair few as a lot of comments will be about minor niggles and the lack of having an email in your sent box will mean a lot of people just don't follow it up when, almost inevitably, there is no reply.

As above, eventually this lack of interest in the opinions and issues of those time-wasters (I like to call them 'customers'), will hurt most companies. But hey, so long as they've had a quiet life in the interim.

Quite often they are used to drop your details into a CRM system so the sales monkeys can peter you indefinitely.

I believe that email addresses on a website can now be masked using Javascrpt, but they used to be harvested and used for spamming - forms stopped that and forms with captcha worked even better.

They also make sure you give sufficient info to allow the company to have a clue what you really want, etc.

Also, I'm pretty sure you are required to have a full address, tel no and company reg no if you are trading on line and you are a limited company - meeting our tech director later this morning so will check the last one.

Do all messages, sent via these web contact forms, get shot into the sun never to be seen again?

Ctrl-A Del usually

If you have that twitface and footbook thing called social media, blooming engage with people on it, make it useful not just 'ooooh, gimme more money' posts.

Amen, Brother!

Depends normally wouldn't buy from a co that doesn't have an address and phone number but not really put off by contact forms

I think any legitimate company has to publish there registered address and company number on their web site!

Just put your email address as an image - less spam, but people can just email you by that do fashioned typing it in thing.

That is a rubbish option. Its annoying as an end user and also is completely inaccessible (unless you correctly complete the image alt tag which would in turn defeat the point).

Decent spam cleaning software is not that expensive (and a lot of ISPs provide it) so there really is no reason not to prominently publish an email address.

I think the reason for the lack of response on Social meedja stuff is 'cause they use a timer, like Hootsuite or similar to send out preformatted messages, whilst we use one at work we do have someone monitoring the incoming feed Mon-Fri but not all day at weekends.