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A friend of mine who preferred to remain anonymous passed this on to me, with permission to post it for the world to see.

He had been trying to purchase a product from Officeworks' website, but the site said it was unavailable over the Internet, only direct from stores, and to call a number to find out which stores had stock. Unfortunately, the number they gave wasn't connected.

So he tried to send them a message via a form on their website. Naturally enough, being a multi-bazillion dollar company, the software they are using is broken, and it deleted his message when he tried to send it because he didn't fill in enough information. Which led to this message being sent:

This is my SECOND attempt to send this. The first time was to notify you that your catalog contains an error. Product ID CHH5606 says "Not available at all locations, call 13 15 05 for details" but that phone number is not connected. First rule of successful marketing: get your own phone number right.

I'm also writing to say that your brain-damaged software deleted my message when I clicked send, just because I didn't specify my last name. YOU DON'T NEED MY LAST NAME TO ANSWER AN EMAIL. If I wanted you to know my last name, I would have told you.

And even if you did need to know it, it is rude and stupid beyond belief for the software to delete everything I typed because I left something out. What sort of C-grade pile of crap software are you people running? You probably spent tens of millions of dollars on it too, and the moron responsible for the project probably got a promotion. What a joke.

Damn straight. In fact, according to Australian privacy legislation, Officeworks is skating on awfully thin ice if they force people to leave their name in order to make a random enquiry. Imagine doing that to a phone enquiry -- "I'm sorry sir, I can't answer your questions unless you tell me your full name."