Anyone who has dealt with an electronic service or provider is familiar with "auto reply" – the machine-generated responses that one gets when one sends an e-mail question or request.  They almost never address the issue.

We all know the routine.  We have a problem or question, and we scan the online help for a solution or answer.  Failing to find one, we write a carefully phrased message stating the specific situation in detail.  Some of us may even mention that we have already checked the online resources to no avail.  We may also state that we don't want an automatic, machine-generated boilerplate response.  What we get is, of course, an automatic, machine-generated boilerplate response that doesn't come close to addressing the subject.  It may even be preceded by another automated response that thanks us for our message and tells us how important it is – the Internet counterpart to the recorded "Your call is important to us" messages that one gets on the phone during calls to customer service in which one is on hold for an hour.

Why companies use this method to deal with customers is obvious.  It's cheap, and it virtually eliminates the need to employ customer-service personnel.  The companies seem to think that, if you're a paying customer already,there's no need to baby you with direct answers to direct questions?  Given a few hours or a day, you'll either work out a solution yourself or will find a way around the problem.  They know that the "way around" is unlikely to be termination of service; they'll still get your money.  Statistically speaking, only a tiny proportion of customers will cancel a service because it uses auto reply, partly because nearly everyone does it.*  Especially if the company is large or has virtually no competition, the loss of one frustrated or disgruntled customer is no big deal.  True customer service is the old-fashioned business model anyway, and only a fool would expect it.

Nevertheless, auto reply is a lousy business model.  It sends the message to customers (despite verbal assurances to the contrary) that they don't matter.  It insults them by assuming that they are too dumb to read the online help.  It inspires a sense of injustice because, while they are willing to write carefully phrased e-mail messages dealing with specifics, the suppliers of services are not.  It frustrates the hell out of them because auto replies, as I said, almost never provide solutions.

One day – this is a fantasy, of course – enough competitors may hire enough qualified service people to put the auto reply junkies out of business.  On the other hand – and this seems more likely – one day all business will consist only of machines sending questions and nonanswers to one another, a dystopia of machine-generated information and misinformation in which the human factor is irrelevant.

*I hasten to add that the supplier of this site, CitySlide, is an exception to the rule.  Website owners can present questions and problems in "support tickets" on the Help section of their sites.  Specific, often personalized, answers appear promptly, usually in less than 24 hours, often faster than that.  Although CitySlide's business has expanded since I came here when it was fairly new, that practice remains in effect today and is one of the main reasons why I would not use another service and continue to recommend it to people who want to build a site but lack the programming skills to start from scratch.