Do Not Reply

Okay, so this is my new favorite thing. Surely my gentle readers have received email from “donotreply@somecompany.com”. It turns out that some institutions (several major banks, the TSA, Halliburton) do not want to deal with the email replies sent to these addresses themselves, so they instead use an address like “donotreply@donotreply.com”. The problem (if by “problem” you mean “hilarious fuckup”) is that “donotreply.com” is a registered domain, and the fellow who owns it (Chet Faliszek) reads the email replies and publishes redacted versions of the more amusing ones to his blog.

Apparently Mr. Faliszek receives legal threats more frequently than I change my underwear, but has never once been sued. If the entity contacting him is civil about it, he will remove posts from his blog in exchange for the requester making a donation to hus local pound or animal protection organization.