The CEO’s E-Mail Address
It has been reported that the CEO of Nationwide has been forced to shut his e-mail address, because of protests, that they are charging for overseas cash withdrawals. Apparently, it has now been changed to something like ceo@nationwide.co.uk and you now get through to one of his assistants.
Apparently, there is a web site call ceoemail.com, which gives many of the e-mail addresses or those that run companies and organisations.
So if I was running a large company, how would I organise it?
The e-mail address would be obvious like ceo@megacorp.co.uk and this would then go through a strong spam filter to remove the real rubbish trying to sell me worthless fakes and then pass the rest to my assistant or one of a group of assistants, if the company was large enough or I was getting a lot of e-mail. The assistants would have software, which by just clicking a button would take action on the e-mails. Actions might include.
- Forward to Customer Services or other Departments. These would also go into an e-mail tracking system, so that it can be traced that e-mails have been acted on.
- Put on a block list as it’s abusive. The sender would be told and why!
- Reply with a simple and appropriate e-mail.
- Phone the sender and say something appropriate.
- Send them a nice postcard. I’ve always found that this is a good thing to do, as people won’t throw away a nice picture. But they may pin it to their notice board.
Obviously, you can think of a lot more responses you might use.
The important e-mails would be sent to me for personal action.
Now some companies manage to do this with letters and I can remember receiving a phone call from Sainsbury’s after I’d written in with a complaint to the CEO.
But one thing no company does is to analyse all of the messages and count the occurences of various issues. So to return to the Nationwide example, if the CEO was getting a lot of complaints about withdrawal fees, the CEO would know about it and could take action.
So in fact, if you get the system right, it’s a very powerful way to find out what your customers are thinking about and satisfy their needs!
Are Scammers Getting Better?
I received this e-mail this morning.
HM Revenue & Customs
Crownhill Court
Tailyour Road
Plymouth
PL6 5BZThis is to officially inform you that we have thoroughly completed an investigation with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that your packaged ATM CARD that was received from the Headquarters 1 (HQ1) of the International Monetary Fund, 700 19th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20431 was forwarded to the ATM Issuing Institution for proper verification on the authenticity and it has been confirmed that your ATM CARD is good and ready to be used.
You are advised to forward to our office or via email the following:
1. Identification
2. Electricity bill as proof of address
3. 65GBP for handling and delivery cost.
Joe Amond
For: HM Revenue & Customs
It’s obviously a scam, as it has all the usual elements of a free ATM card, that you really have no right to.
It was also addressed to undisclosed-recipients, which usually means it’s spam. Has anybody ever received an e-mail to undisclosed-recipients, that wasn’t crap?
But :-
- Where are the spelling mistakes?
- There is no expensive phone number.
- The address is genuine, but it’s the Customs Seizure Unit, where you make a claim if they’ve seized your goods.
- They have put a reasonable fee in to the e-mail. But that of course is only the start.
- The e-mail address it was sent for seems OK on a first look. I think it actually came from Russia.
So I believe this e-mail might be good enough to fool some vulnerable or gullible people. Perhaps the Russian education system is better than that of Nigeria?
I must say I’m very tempted to send a cheque for £65 payable to HM Revenue and Customs to Joe Amond in Plymouth and see what happens. THe trouble is I don’t have a cheque book, as I always transfer money directly.
Your Wife Photos Attached
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been getting several e-mails every day with a title of “Your Wife Photos Attached” and just a zip file enclosed. My ISP marks them as spam and as I’m careful, I have never opened the zip, so they have been no threat to my computer until now.
As a widower though, who sorely misses his wife, I don’t like theses messages.
So finally curiosity got the better of me and I this morning I decided to find out what the zip files contain.
I don’t recommend doing this, but if you are careful it is a perfectly safe procedure. I copied the zip file on to an SD card and then transferred this to an old laptop, which is unconnected to the network and the Internet The laptop also has nothing of value on its hard drive, except gigabytes of nothing.
So what did the zip file contain?
Just an image containing a Russian web address, that if you typed it into your browser would give you access to cheap Viagra-type drugs. They would probably be cheap, but useless fakes.
So from a computing point of view they would appear to be safe at present!
But never take the chance of clicking on one of these zip files. Someone will start distributing ones, that are dangerous rather than just annoying!
A Clean Internet Cafe
I’ve used Internet cafes all over the world from Morocco to Istanbul and from Naples to the Gambia.
There are certain characteristics that they all share; cigarette and other smoke, filth, surly operators and crap machines. Except possibly the one in Marrakech, which was kept spotless by a headscarfed and hennaed young lady of impeccable manners, who found it uncanny that my web site had pictures of me on it.
But this one, the Keystone Cafe, just up from King’s Cross Station has none of those nasty characteristics. The machine is a bog-standard Dell and even my typing isn’t that bad. Saying that I just hit the dreaded Windows key and got into a mess.
UAE to Ban Some Blackberry Services
I’ve never used a Blackberry, but I can understand why people do! I also didn’t know that they use their own method of encription for e-mail, which I would asume makes it fairly secure. Now according to the BBC, the UAE wants to ban these sort of services, because they can’t read e-mail sent between the devices.
It strikes me that if the UAE wants to be a business and holiday centre of choice, that this would not appeal to those, who they would wish to attract.
Too Many Thank You E-Mails
I’m having to write lots of these and was getting fed up entering, “Thanks, etc.” all the time and then just clicking Send.
So, I created Signature in Outlook called Thanks.
Now I just click Reply, Insert, Signature, Thanks, perhaps add a few words and then click Send.
Learn how to use signatures to save time and hassle.
I’ve also created one called Evil Empire for unwanted e-mails from countries that still use the death penalty.
The Anonymous Widower 