Server/mail/naming setup theory

Dan Jenkins dan at rastech.com
Sun Apr 18 21:47:00 EDT 2004


bscott at ntisys.com wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, at 11:50am, dan at rastech.com wrote:
>  
>
>>(I had a client who almost lost a $50,000 deal due to a single missed
>>email.)
>>    
>>
>
>  Eeeesh.  Yah.  I regularly remind my clients that Internet email is not
>and never was a "guaranteed reliable" service, and that if the subject
>matter is critical, one should follow-up email in some way (such as by
>sending a fax, or requesting positive confirmation of receipt *from the
>person* (and not their mail program)).
>
>  Not that many listen, but at least I've warned them.  :-)
>  
>
Me too. And the number of times I've had someone call me to tell me the 
Internet was down because
they sent an email and it hadn't been delivered yet (less than 5 minutes 
later), double-eeeesh.

In this case, it wasn't my client which sent the critical email. They 
were supposed to have received it.
It was sheer coincidence that they called their customer and asked a 
related question that saved the
deal. Their customer just assumed that email was reliable enough to 
place an expedited critical order -
without bothering with a followup phone call or fax. (The critical email 
did arrive - the next day. Upon
examining the headers, it was held up in the sender's mail server for 
about 14 hours. Documenting
that helped mollify their customer somewhat.)

-- 
Dan Jenkins (dan at rastech.com)
Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-624-7272
*** Technical Support for over a Quarter Century




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