Is it really too much to ask that when somebody uses the contact email address on a web site to expect that they’ve actually read at least the first page of that web site? I just got an email to the address that is published on the Rochester Flying Club web site that asked a bunch of questions that prove categorically that the sender had not read the first page of the site, specifically the part that says “It is not a flying school, although we welcome student pilots”.
His second question was “Is Rochester Flying Club just a Pilot School, or it is a college too?”. Which part of “It is not a flying school” are you having trouble understanding there, sport? His other questions are just as oriented towards a full time flying school.
One thing that’s unusual, though. Normally I get these sorts of clueless emails from people in India or Pakistan – and indeed I found our club web site linked from an Indian site that claimed to be a list of flying schools in the US, but this time the guy claims to live in Rochester, although from his wording I’m not so sure. “I live in Rochester, NY which is 14 miles away from 1313 Scottsville Rd, Rochester, NY.” Doesn’t that sound like somebody who plugged two addresses into Google in order to provide some fake verisimilitude? Although I have trouble thinking of a part of Rochester that’s 14 miles away from the airport.
I work in technical support. I assure you that reading a web page before asking a question is way too much to ask of most people.
A friend of mine, Dr Nikos Drakos, wrote Latex2Html. A mistake he made was to make the program put a signature on each page (“converted by latex2html” plus his name and email address). Why was this a mistake? Because he would receive _lots_ of emails from people on obscure topics simply because a LaTeX document had been converted using his program and the people reading the resulting web page assumed _he_ was the document author.
Guh.
Shocking? Yes
Unforgivable? Absolutely
Unexpected? Recalibrate your cynic-o-matic.
eBay Is another fine example of a place where many can’t be bothered to read the bloody webpage before asking questions.
Something I routinely sell on eBay has my most common question answered within the first few lines of the auction description, yet I routinely receive emails asking that exact question.
It’s tempting to give these idiots a piece of my mind in the response, but it probably wouldn’t do much for my sales, so I just grit my teeth.