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“I have toyota corola”

daniel.haxx.se

21–30 of 365 posts

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#21
post #14
post #5

> I can’t help them and I’ve learned over the years that just trying to explain how I have nothing to do with the product they’re using is often just too time consuming and energy draining to be worth it. You could write out a form response once, then just send it to everyone, and not respond to follow-ups. Not that you have to, of course, but it shouldn't be energy draining, at least.

I've been in that position before, where people would find my e-mail address as a supposed tech support for something I have no relationship with whatsoever. Usually when you tell them they have a wrong e-mail, they get really angry ("I want to talk to your manager!" kind of angry). So it's better to just not respond at all.

That sounds extremely funny. I would pay good money to get to be on the receiving end of "I want to talk to your manager!" when you can act however you want.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#22

I believe this is karma of every stable open source product, which gained enough popularity.

That would be the opposite of karma, wouldn't it? Unless OSS is unrewarded evil in your eyes

$ google "define karma"

  karma
  /ˈkɑːmə,ˈkəːmə/
  noun
  noun: karma
    (in Hinduism and Buddhism) the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future
  informal
    good or bad luck, viewed as resulting from one's actions.

Not all karma is good. The important part is the "resulting from one's actions"

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#23
As somebody who has written to companies about bugs in their products (and almost always ignored), I would really appreciate a response even if it was some form letter thing to the effect of "I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly."

I personally just like knowing somebody read my letter instead of going into a black hole. And I kind of expect these things to go into black holes, so it's actually kind of heart warming when I receive any kind of response.

And this response would at least tell me to try a different contact. (I know in this case who Daniel Stenberg is and know what curl is so I wouldn't make this specific mistake, but sometimes hunting for support contact information returns things that are vague.)

If the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine because it just means they don't understand, which means they are just getting angrier at the car company. The car company deserves that since they made it so hard to contact them.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#25
post #16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in that position before, where people would find my e-mail address as a supposed tech support for something I have no relationship with whatsoever. Usually when you tell them they have a wrong e-mail, they get really angry ("I want to talk to your manager!" kind of angry). So it's better to just not respond at all.

What about quietly forwarding the email to the legit tech support mailbox for Toyota, if such a thing exists? Are there problems with that approach (other than the tech support people replying to you instead of their customer).

As he said in the comments, if they couldn't find a support email, why would he be able to? The issue is not Toyota-specific, there are tons of different cars shipping curl; is he supposed to become some sort of customer-support switchboard?

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#26
I have had a similar problem for about two decades now in regards to eCards (virtual greeting cards). I own youknowwhat.com and one of my email addresses is youknowwho@youknowwhat...

Turns out that thousands of people every year think they are being super clever by putting my email address in the "From" field. So of course I get zillions of "receipts" for these eCards.

"Sister, I hope you feel better soon"

...is the most popular by far.

I stopped looking at them years ago but there's often some very personal information included and if I were an evil supervillain it would be trivial for me to use a lot of these eCards to blackmail people!

Fortunately for these people there's a highly ethical person at the helm of that email address that filters them all right into the trash.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#27

I've got the feeling I've read this before. Could it have happened to someone else? Or maybe to Daniel himself but under different circumstances?

He previously posted one about someone emailing him about a hacked Instagram after finding his name and the email @haxx.se in the licenses. EDIT: Here's the link: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/01/19/subject-urgent-warnin...

That was it! thank you very much!

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#28

As somebody who has written to companies about bugs in their products (and almost always ignored), I would really appreciate a response even if it was some form letter thing to the effect of "I just make a small component that happens to be used in your car, kind of like the people who make the screws in your car. Please contact your car manufacturer directly." I personally just like knowing somebody read my letter i…

But there are, presumably, tens if not hundreds of millions of cars with curl in them now. While I'm sure you would appreciate a response, imagine the time it would take to reply to these questions? I mean it's not like it's a bug in curl...

As for "if the customer gets angry at the response, it's fine...", well, what if you're taking the time to reply and then getting angry responses? What a waste of emotional energy.

Personally I'd agree that the correct thing to do is not to reply, there's only so many hours in the day, and there's really _nothing_ he can do to fix anything.

Re: “I have toyota corola”

#30
post #16
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in that position before, where people would find my e-mail address as a supposed tech support for something I have no relationship with whatsoever. Usually when you tell them they have a wrong e-mail, they get really angry ("I want to talk to your manager!" kind of angry). So it's better to just not respond at all.

What about quietly forwarding the email to the legit tech support mailbox for Toyota, if such a thing exists? Are there problems with that approach (other than the tech support people replying to you instead of their customer).

It's a lot of effort and one which you wouldn't expect businesses to do this so I don't really see why open source projects should be any different.
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