Some people just don’t listen

Have you ever felt you were not being listened to? I have this week, it’s almost laughable at how little emails must be getting read and yet they get replied to.

I was doing some digging for domains owned by companies in administration or liquidation looking for a bargain as you do, I found shelving.co.uk owned by Dexion Ltd, if you check at companies house for Dexion Ltd it shows as STATUS: Administrative Receiver

So often from here it’s a case of approaching the administrator but the domain still works and the company seems to be trading so I thought I’d contact them:

Sent 23rd September

I am interested in the domain name shelving.co.uk which is not in use, I would be prepared to pay £500 plus associated transfer fee

If you could please let me know either way I would appreciate your time.

In a timely manner a received a reply that makes it look like they have confused me with a potential customer to buy shelving, not sure how as my email seemed straight forward enough, they replied saying

 

Thank you for your enquiry.

For me to be able to process your enquiry please can you provide me with further details: - The project address (including postcode)? What would the shelving be used to store?

Should you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Perhaps it’s a standard reply, I don’t want shelving I want the domain name..sheesh!, so I persevere, I have learnt to do that if nothing else

I think we are at cross purposes, I enclose my address for info however I am interested in the shelving domain name which your company owns but does not use. http://webwhois.nic.uk/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?query=shelving.co.uk

That should make things a bit clearer!

 

Thank you for your enquiry. I apologise for the delay in responding to you we have experienced an IT issue with my email recently which has caused this.

We generally operate via a network of Dexion approved storage centres located throughout the UK. The local distributor for your area is as detailed below:

Modul 8
Unit 1 Craigshaw Commercial Park
Craigshaw Drive
ABERDEEN
AB12 3BE

Your details have been forwarded to the above Company and somebody should be in contact with you shortly.

I trust this is of some assistance but should you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Hmm, they seemed determined to ignore my email and treat me as if I am asking about shelving rather than their business asset, I wonder how they managed to get into so much difficulty as a business?

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. Hope they eventually get back to you and you can make a deal Scott 🙂

    Adam Dempsey’s last blog post..MooPlug 0.4.7 Finally Released

  2. Maybe that person doesn’t know what a domain name is?

  3. Sounds much more like a clever auto responder to me. First step to read the email for matching a postcode regular expression, if found then locate nearest approved storage centre and email the details to them.
    The stats on email recipient understanding ture meaning of the sender are frightfully bad but surely not that bad! Is the next stop a phone call Scott?

    • If you had a clever autoresponder which was capable of regular expressions as part of its logic would you really tell every single customer…

      Thank you for your enquiry. I apologise for the delay in responding to you we have experienced an IT issue with my email recently which has caused this.

      that is some strange psychology (perhaps building up tension) not to mention presuming that its such a clever auto responder that once it matches the expression it also has a reply delay on it.

      That said what a neat idea 🙂 barring the apology part. I think I agree with Kevin its more likely the person did not have a clue what you were talking about, nor by the sounds of things did they know they were in administration (not entirely sure but I’m pretty sure you have to tell the potential customer before sending them off to buy the product) maybe a part time tele worker who is going to be surprised at the end of the month when they don’t receive their pay cheque

      Tim Nash’s last blog post..Want advice on StumbleUpon?

      • I guess you could class a part time tele-worker as a clever auto responder? (that would make me a part time clever OCR-ing machine) 🙂 hehe It is perhaps far fetched idea given the evidence I admit, however there does seem to be something fishy about the responses. Hopefully Scott updates us when he finally gets to the source.

  4. funny indeed but the story seems to be incomplete. So what happened with the domain. were you about to make any progress after all or not.

    My experience on the contrary have been “long wait and not reply” whenever I have tried to contact any webmaster for any reason. 90 % of the time i never got any reply.

    I wonder if the webmasters really check their emails or why they don’t reply back. I know with increasing spam mails its difficult to keep track but just dropping a single line shouldn’t take that much time.

    Anyways interesting post indeed.

    John

  5. Sounds like a low paid member of staff hired to deal with email enquiries, probably only gets to see spam emails and people buying shelves. I think you need to get a contact name for the CEO, or email again asking that your email is forwarded to someone higher up the chain.

    Stick with it though, the fun is in the chase and you may still get the domain!

  6. Have you tried the good old fashioned telephone? I was looking to acquire a domain name recently owned (for no apparent reason) by an auto dealership. It took 4 emails and many more voicemails before someone replied!

    Justin Cook’s last blog post..What to do when you’re dropped from Google’s index

  7. Well, could it possibly that the person obviously does not want to sell the domain name to you, instead would like you to sort of buy their product.

    From the replies, it seems that the person who wrote that is someone who knows little about IT, not to mention domain names. It sounds professional, but it simply does not match.

    Once again, it seems like a hard fish to catch, unless you have his direct contact number to call him. That’ll make business simpler.

  8. Maybe English is a second language for the people clearing the e-mails.

  9. Peter From australia says:

    LOL…i found this blog as a link on DEXION LTD Google finance(which is an australian stock).the administartor was appointed to dexion ltd an english stock i think….. yet it seems there australian counterpart isnt fairing much better….share down from $4 to 70c…thants not good right….Maybe you should be sending them an email to :))

  10. Yea, I think it’s pretty universal. I’ve contacted probably half a dozen large companies in the last week, via a contact form on their website… and been ignored or replied to in the wrong context (and this was not to buy their domain, this was an enquiry about becoming a customer!)

    One thing that sometimes works is to write a blog post about a company, then see if someone drops by and leaves a comment thanking you for the review

    Cheers, Jon

    Jon’s last blog post..Salon Websites - HourTown online scheduling software

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