A customer returns...

A short while ago I mentioned a company that took over a customer's domain and web hosting and then phoned me up to get themselves out of a mess. Well, I say to get themselves out of a mess, but really they probably hadn't realised they'd messed things up for their newly acquired customer ignorance being a wonderful thing. ;) So this morning I get a call from a staff member of the ex-customer saying he can't collect mail from his old email address. Now, what the new "media" company had done was use web-forwarding to point people who went to the old website to the new one they'd developed. No problem with that. But what about all those contacts of the company who still had the old email address - well tough! No provision had been made to forward on any mail sent to the oold domain address. It wouldn't have been a big job to sort out, but there you go. I suggested to the staff member that he ask the new "media" company to set-up the old domain to forward any mail addressed to his old email address so that it was delivered to his new email address. I did point out that I'd got the impression they didn't really know what they were doing, so not to get his hopes up. Anyway, I get a call later to say, "No, the other company didn't have a clue" and how could this person notify all his contacts of his new address. I sorted him out and duly received an email, later, notifying me of his new email details. Now, I wonder how many people will update their records? Or will the company lose business, because the contact can't get through to the... Sales Manager? So, the moral of this tale? Make sure you're dealing with a company that understands simple business issues when it comes to your email otherwise there's no telling what business you may lose.