Courier company of the DAMNED

Okay, I like to rant. But honestly, sometimes there's just such good material it would be a crime not to.

I got cross-shipped a computer part recently. Although I was in the middle of a ticket with the vendor, and thus it wasn't unexpected, the first I found out about it was when I received this email from Loomis, The Courier Company of the DAMNED :

Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:06:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: nx6122@loomis-express.com
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: 09/16/2011 13:05:16  Easyship 2.0 Shipment Notification

09/16/2011 13:05:16  See attached file/Voir le fichier ci-joint.

There was an attachment: a base64-encoded file called "110916130516REPORT.DOC". Against my better judgement, I saved the attachment and viewed it with hexdump, fully expecting it to be full of Javascript or PDF or Flash or whatever the kids are using these days. Instead, I found that it was a plain ASCII file -- not a Word document, not even an RTF document -- that had delivery information for the part I was being shipped.

The "From:" address' domain is "loomis-express.com". The "Received:" headers mentioned various "dhl.com" servers. And the plain text in the REPORT.DOC said to visit "loomisexpress.com" for further information. That's three different domains.

This is unbelievably bad. I was sure I was being phished. If a user had asked me about this email, I would have told them to delete it. And then I would have scrubbed their hard drive with lye.

Against that, the plain ol' outdated info in the second email, telling me how to schedule a pickup for the returned part, was just endearing. The link to their web page just gave a 404; when I found the pickup page by myself, it wanted me to set up an account before it would do anything. (Probably a fair request, but I don't want to be bothered since I'M NOT GOING TO USE THEM AGAIN.)

I gave up and called the toll-free number in the email; I got a stern voicemail from DHL saying that the numbers had changed, and this one was for DHL customers ONLY and Loomis Express people should either visit loomis-hyphen-express-dot-com or call a new toll-free number...which I noticed was different from the toll-free number displayed boldly on the return shipping label.

I've emailed them about their poor email design, and got a response:

Thank you for taking the time to email us. On behalf of Loomis Express, please accept our sincerest apologies for the delayed response to this email.

We have copied the technical support group on this reply so that they could look into the matter and resolve if this actually came directly from Loomis Express.

I think that says it all.