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Arnold was excited to receive an e-mail from Toys R Us advertising a special early-bird sale of Zhu Zhu Pets. The inexpensive little robot hamsters are in short supply, and the chain promised critters to the first fifty households who showed up at their local store on Sunday morning. Only Arnold reports that not only did his local store never have any of the battery-operated rodents in stock, it wasn't open at the advertised hour at all.  More Â»

Having trouble with HSBC? Executive customer service no help? Here's where to contact the president and CEO of HSBC Bank USA.  More Â»

Richard says his wife's Hotmail account was hacked, and now she can't get into her email or fix the problem via Microsoft's customers service online or over the phone. He writes:  More Â»

Sometimes, the executive e-mail carpet bomb, or EECB, is too blunt an instrument. When Joe had a problem with T-Mobile, he elected to send a LGEB, or laser-guided e-mail bomb, just to CEO Robert Dotson, with great results.  More Â»

The judicial system has spoken in the case of the spreadsheet full of personal data accidentally e-mailed to a random Gmail user by an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank. Google must reveal the account holder's identity, and the account has been deactivated.  More Â»

Here's the problem with Gmail: so many people use it that a mistyped e-mail address probably will not result in a bounced message. It will result in your message going to the wrong person, since nearly every derivation of a name is probably a working address.   More Â»

BJ received the coupon at left, offering $9.99 off at Heartland America on September 9 (9/9/09, get it?) Which would be great if they had mailed it to him before 10 AM on September 10th. "Looks like if I want to use the coupon I will need to build a time machine," he wrote.  More Â»

EVERY WORKPLACE SEEMS TO HAVE THAT ONE PERSON WHO STILL JUST DOESN'T UNDERSTAND E-MAIL. IN ONE OFFICE IN NEW ZEALAND, THAT PERSON WAS FIRED AFTER TOO MANY COLLEAGUES COMPLAINED ABOUT HER SENDING OUT MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS, IN BOLDFACE, OR IN RED AND BLUE.  More Â»

Anthony has tried every means possible to get Post to stop spamming him, but Post laughs in the face of reason. And at customer requests. The only thing Anthony feels he has left to try is contacting the FTC, but he adds "I get the feeling that won't help."  More Â»

No, Amazon is not contacting its members and performing regular fraud checks. Jason received this e-mail, which is associated with a rather convincing Amazon phishing site.  More Â»

Why, in a rational world, does spam continue to exist? Because someone you know—or maybe it's you—has actually tried to buy something from it, a new study finds. Find that person and beat him (or yourself) with a stapler.  More Â»

Is AOL ripping off your mom? ...or stepdad, or aunt, or neighbor? Mainstreet.com gets to the bottom of why AOL continues to charge many, many not-terribly-Internet-savvy customers for their AOL e-mail accounts. You know, the same AOL accounts that are actually offered for free and have been since 2006. [MainStreet]  More Â»

Jiffy Lube agreed to pay Alison over $250 after botching routine work that forced her to interrupt her road trip for emergency car repairs. Alison's mechanic said that Jiffy Lube's attempted transmission fluid flush could have caused "catastrophic car damage" if left unfixed. Jiffy Lube denied all responsibility until Alison fired off an Executive Email Carpet Bomb to C.E.O. Rick Altizer, who agreed not only to reimburse for the repairs, but refunded the original cost of the transmission fluid flush, and tossed in a few coupons for free oil changes.  More Â»

Brooke's husband, like many sensible people, loves bacon. As a gift, she bought him a subscription to the Bacon of the Month Club. For a few months, they received fantastic bacon and whimsical bacon-related merchandise through the mail, just as promised. Then, suddenly, things went awry in mail-order bacon paradise.   More Â»

What's an account-related message from your company, and what's marketing? Kevin, the subject of this week's Red Tape Chronicles column, wants to know, because he'd like Capital One to stop sending him advertisements for their products. Capital One claims that he can't opt out, since the marketing pitches are "account management communications." Right.  More Â»

Tagged.com has been around for a few years now, but it's spread across the Internet with a vengeance in the last few weeks. The service promotes itself by getting inside the address book or e-mail contacts of people who sign up and e-mailing everyone they know. It's disingenuous, since the e-mail looks like an invitation from your friend or family member...but they didn't initiate it at all.  More Â»

Jacob got engaged last weekend. Yay! Mysteriously, before the wedding plans could even begin, his fiancée received an e-mail from Pottery Barn inviting her to start a wedding registry. Except she never signed up with them, or told any other retailer that she was engaged. What she did do was...change her Facebook status.
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Sure, far be it from me as Consumerist tipline czarina to criticize people for having canned responses to e-mails, and especially for mixing up said canned responses, but this was still too amusing not to share.  More Â»