We're not blowing you off - that costs extra.

I understand that some customers might feel blown-off when they send email to support, and get a reply containing a few words and a link to a webpage.

The truth of the matter is, we are doing our best to provide a solution to the problem in question.

The content provided on that page has been honed over years to provide the best possible advice for users facing the issue at hand. Common questions regarding the spam blocker come up, and we create pages that try to cover as many aspects of them as possible. The pages are reviewed, proofread and enhanced on a regular basis.

For instance, users having problems with the mysterious "Error 70" are best served by this page. Anyone asking about that error is going to get that link. Certainly, if the advice offered there doesn't solve it - we expect another email. But we also have to assume users really read the pages we send them.

What's frustrating is when users reply back, "it's still not working!" after they're sent a link to a support page. All too frequently, other details of their response hint that they didn't bother to look at the page, or at least didn't give it serious consideration.

Now of course we can't accuse users of not following instructions. That's not too far off from suggesting they're liars. To do so would be rude. However, it relegates our further responses to a bit of a game. We pretend they followed our suggestions, and offer advice that we fully know may not be useful as a result.

After several cycles, we direct them back to the previously mentioned webpage, and maybe they read it. After nine or ten emails - the problem gets solved because they finally followed the advice suggested after their first support request.

So please, if you're referred to a webpage, read it. If it doesn't solve the issue, that's certainly understandable. But please reply with something along the lines of, "I tried items 3 and 4 on that page, and it didn't work. The error I got was...."

Of course, we could just outsource all our support to India...

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