Like the dorky kid in a high school sitcom who tries to change his image by showing up one day in leather pants and frosted hair, JCPenney has spent the last year desperately trying to make over its image as a place people used to get dragged to by their mom every August. But all the across-the-board price cuts, logo redesigns and iPad-toting cashiers in the world can’t cover up sheer incompetence.

Consumerist reader E. had sent a rather simple e-mail to JCPenney’s Customer Care department asking how he could unsubscribe from the retailer’s automated e-mails. Should be a simple issue to resolve, but rather than getting a response saying he’d been unsubscribed or explaining how he could do so, he gets the above auto-generated message.

Not only does the message have absolutely nothing to do with his question — he made no mention of an any online order — whichever CSR-bot sent it couldn’t even be bothered to choose whether or not the change he never requested had been made to the order he never placed.

At least E. has a sense of humor about it.

“This email response is just a hilarious extra bonus which I got for trying to communicate this to the ‘Customer Care’ team.”

We wonder if maybe this is just new JCP CEO Ron Johnson’s attempt to innovate by creating the first ever choose your own adventure customer service team?

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