Another of Scott's Homes on the Web

I complained at LinkedIn last week about one sub-set of their e-mails. Most of their e-mails have reasonably good text/plain and text/html parts - this one sub-set (which is pointers to what might be the second-most interesting stuff on the set) is pure html. AsYouKnowBob, I use mutt to read my personal e-mail, using bash over ssh. The hand-off for the html mime type is to lynx, which I haven't bothered to learn how to coerce into https & log-in required yet. So, I complained about the lack of a proper text/plain part.

My complaint got handed off to 'the group in charge of that area'. And then I got a reply of 'I don't understand what you're talking about'!

Grrr...

Here's my reply:

It is frustrating to me that someone who is apparently tasked with providing help on e-mail does not understand what multi-part e-mail is.

An e-mail is frequently composed of multiple parts - most frequently, a plain-text part and an html part, although there are other possible parts. Talk to your e-mail administrators, or look at these few results from googling "multi-part e-mail" = https://www.fiveq.com/blog/email-marketing/multi-part-vs-html-or-text-only-emails/, https://litmus.com/blog/reach-more-people-and-improve-your-spam-score-why-multi-part-email-is-important, and http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc1341/7_2_Multipart.html.

You might especially note the fact that not having a plain-text portion gets your e-mails lots of points when using the default spamassassin rules - in other words, it greatly increases the chances that your e-mail will get marked as spam.

Do you understand that whatever is generating your e-mails is generating something formatted as pure HTML? Do you understand the concept of a plain-text e-mail client?

Try saving one of the automatic e-mails your system generates to a file, and then open it in something like NotePad. THAT should be what I see when I open one of your e-mails. In a multi-part e-mail, there would be a plain-text portion that has no formatting - no bold, no italics, no HREF links - just the text and explicit http links.

I should have written this up a while back.

Back in February, I bought a Kindle e-book that was self-published by a friend. Read it on my PC, and enjoyed it.

In early March, I got Kindle 3, and re-downloaded said e-book, and read it again. There were formatting problems in the last third of the book. Checked, nope, the formatting on the PC version is just fine. Told author about it, said I'd let them know what Kindle tech support said.

I contacted Kindle tech support via web form, they said I should re-download. Turned wireless off, deleted the book, turned wireless on, re-download - problem still exists.

Per the tech support e-mail, I call Kindle tech support - after some discussion, the tech downloads the e-book to her Kindle, and confirms the problem. I let the author know Kindle tech support has confirmed the problem.

Within a couple of days, the friend/publisher gets an e-mail, 'a quality control check found a problem with your e-book' - nothing to indicate that the quality control check was kicked off by a customer complaint. Friend spends lots of time trying to fix the problem, Amazon isn't any help, their spouse finds the cause and a fix (HTML from Word for Mac fed to Kindlizer has /div issues). Friend fixes e-book, uploads new version, problem is confirmed as fixed. They let me know.

I try to re-download the fixed version. Fail miserably. Try multiple times over several days, always get the old version. Check with friend, yes, the new version is up. How do I know it's the new version? Check the copyright page. Oh, Amazon said 'have people who previously downloaded call this 800# to get the corrected version'.

I call the 800#. The person who answers listens to me, and says, 'Oh, this is a Kindle issue - let me transfer you to someone who can help you.'

I tell the second person, "{Author} has uploaded a new version of {book} that fixes some minor formatting problems. I want to download the new version." Person asks me what version of Kindle software I'm running, I find it for them - it isn't quite where they said it was. And they tell me I'm running the most current version of the software, why do I want to download a more recent version? I try again - "I do not want new software, I want the newer version of {book}". We go back and forth another couple of times before this concept gets through, and person says 'I'll have to transfer you to someone who can handle this issue'.

IIRC, this third tech also had problems with the concept of "{Author} has uploaded a new version of {book} that fixes some minor formatting problems. I want to download the new version." Once I got it through, they said, 'Yes, I should be able to help with that, one minute please'.

After more than that minute, but less than five, a fourth person gets on the line, confirms what I want - yes, I bought it mid-February, yes, the author told me they've uploaded a more recent version as of last week that fixes formatting, that's the version I'm not getting', they confirm that I've deleted the old version and re-started my Kindle, and they queue it up for me. In another couple of minutes, the new version is downloaded and I have confirmed that the minor formatting issues are gone.

It took somewhere in the 20-30 minutes range on the phone to finally get the new version of the book.

Amazon sent me a 'how did we do?' survey about this. They got excellent marks for policy, and lousy marks for implementation.