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Admin
Was there supposed to be some sort of feedback indicating mail was being/had been sent?
If not, then I can sort of see a business manager thinking nothing had happened and clicking again. I probably would have too.
Of course, that's a mistake you only make once.
Admin
My turn not your turn! No you push the botton I push the button!
Admin
This was at least partly caused by not giving any visual clue that the button-pushing had an effect.
Or by the manager not having a clue.
Admin
This is why we add little "Loading..." messages with spinny little .gifs on them to our web apps. Clicking buttons lots of times in just about anything web-based can cause bad things to happen.
Actually it's a good idea to disable such buttons with an OnClick() method to prevent this sort of thing, unless of course said actions by the users will result in your company getting 3 times the money they were going to :D
Admin
So their future charges by the bulk mailer will be significantly smaller thanks to alerting and culling all the too-lazy-to-unsubscribe people... where's the WTF?
Admin
Crappy GUI design without adequate feedback leads guy to click button multiple times.
Pretty weak WTF.
Admin
Ah, the old "let's send an unknown large quantity of emails right from the web thread and except the user to wait 5 minutes for a http response" trick!
Background worker services people! Or if not clever enough for those, at least the one line of javascript that disables the submit button once the request has been sent.
Admin
The only RTWF here is that they didn't scream at their bulk e-mailer about their crappy interface and demand they only be billed for the first mass mailing, or else they'll nip down to whatever circle of hell these people live in and find another mass e-mail company.
Admin
How could this be hard? Someone else created all the emails, and sending it out was handled by a "bulk mailer." I call BS on this entire story.
Admin
TRWTF is this article being on The Daily WTF. So some guy clicks a button more than once? Is that really the best submission you got?
Admin
Ellellator go down the hoooole
Admin
I think this should be your missing easy reader version. ^^
Additionally, the company could make a legitimate case to the bulk emailer that a refund is in order for the second and third click. After all, they could have at least put a warning to only click once if they weren't going to bother designing their GUI properly.
Admin
Admin
Admin
Let's do the Maths:
They have sent out 100,000 more e-mails than they were meant to. 5,000 users unsubscribed as a result So it will take 20 runs to break even.
I have never tried this by the way, but "Do-Not-Reply" e-mail addresses really annoy me, and I would like to see what happened if you e-mailed one with an e-mail apparently from itself.
Admin
Oh my lord, you must be joking. How many years have we been using online forms? How many times have we read that little warning next to some submit button that says "Only click the submit button ONCE"? Even non-technical types managed to figure this one out some time in the late 90s, generally the first time they ordered three identical items by hammering the "Buy" button before the page had reloaded.
But then this is a business analyst so I guess it's par for the course, I wonder if he knows where his ass is and if he would be able to distinguish it from his elbow.
Admin
What, miss out on billing people several times? That sounds like a business model to me
Admin
Any story that sounds like TheOnion is fine by me, I'm ok with checking both sites every day - I could[n't] care less.
"Area Man Clicks Button Twice More After Seconds Without Response"
CAPTCHA: immitto, so imminent you can taste it.
Admin
Admin
One time, I typed
instead of and irrevocably toasted my Windows partition.Point being? Mistakes can happen without it being a WTF.
(On a side note, I never reinstalled Windows; in hindsight I don't consider that act a bad thing).
Admin
Perhaps they'll find a bulk email service that doesn't suck quite as much as this one, which is apparently quite a lot. (Quiet, Westwood!)
On a job like this, you'd typically hand the package and the address list to the service provider ("hand" it electronically, for the overly literal-minded), and the only button to push would be a confirmation that the job is the one you want - you certainly wouldn't have a "send" button that actually triggers the event.
Most likely you'd want to have both parts in place before the target drop time, which would be scheduled - so the "button" might be pushed a week before the emails are scheduled to go out, leaving time for any last-minute oopsies to be caught. There's no reason at all why "pushing the button" would have to be a live event.
Nevertheless, I can certainly believe that there are such suck-filled bulk email "services" out there, because people are dumb enough to pay lots of money for stupid, even though it's about the most common commodity around.
Admin
An extra 100,000 emails? How much could that have possibly cost the company? $10?
Admin
And by the way, I stopped seeing those warnings long, long ago. Designers have by and large figured it out.
Admin
Ahh, so this is why Clayton always tells Frank to push the button instead of just pushing it himself...
Admin
Sending the same email is one of the least consequential mistakes a company can make. After all, it's spam: You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
Not that I'm very proud of it but my company has repeatedly allowed hundreds of notifications to get mixed up between recipients, so Abe can see Bob's, Carl's and Dean's personal information regarding orders from organizations Abe has never even heard of.
Admin
:-O Double entendre intentional?
Admin
The problem is that it starts as a service for yourself and then 5 years down the line, the marketing guy's saying "Why can't I use the mail page?" and when you try to explain that it's a hack, he's all "It looks fine to me!" at which point you bury your head in the sand and hope he goes away.
Admin
By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?
Admin
I suggest you go outside and don't come back until you have something to offer, even if it is a snarky retort.
Admin
Admin
Surely his ass in in his stable... Where do you keep your asses in the US?
Admin
Wouldn't this greatly increase the chances of getting blacklisted? If I get a newsletter and don't feel like unsubscribing, I just delete it. If I got three, I would click the little "Mark as spam" button for all three of them.
Admin
Or we could just say the WTF was that they were reprimanded despite the appropriate outcome.
Admin
Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.
Admin
Remy is punishing us for our insolence! No secret comments?!
Admin
If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.
Admin
Do you really need a bulk emailing service for 50,000 emails? that doesn't seem like that many
Admin
Admin
As far as I know they all suck. I don't know how this situation has persisted. Maybe only bad programmers are willing to work at bulk email software companies? Who knows, but if you are aware of one that doesn't suck, let me know.
Also, do you even need a bulk emailer to email 50,000 people? That's not even that many. When you get into the millions+ is where it starts to get difficult.
Admin
Aww, there were. Apparently editorial decree decided that some of them should be cut, and they all went. Some of them did get a bit silly, I admit.
Which is sad, because one of the secret comments was an Invention Exchange sketch between Clayton and Joel.
Admin
Admin
Oh, dog, here we go with today's mindless philosophizing.
It is written: "The seeker of knowledge approached a wise man. 'Tell me, Wise One, how is x010F pronounced?' And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, wise one, may one begin a sentence with a conjunction, or is such a thing forbidden by the laws?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, your sagacity, is one infinitely greater than zero, or is it one greater than zero?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Oh, great sage, you beat me with the club of cleverness, but I am no more clever than before, how can this be?' cried the seeker. The wise man replied, 'It's actually just a stick, I keep hoping you'll go away if I hit you often enough, but here you are.'"
Admin
That was more my point. I wasn't intending to troll, just to be pedantic along the same lines as the 'could cared less/couldn't care less' argument, which I also referenced.
Admin
yo dogg i herd u like parables so i broke all ur windows so you can profit while u lern
Admin
Well, I haven't actually sent out the email, but the people who do the bulk mailings where I work seem pretty happy with Lyris. That's where I got the description of a functional bulk email service, anyway. Bear in mind, my only experience with their service is documenting systems that ultimately talk to them, I've never actually used them.
Admin
But I did really enjoy the story, thanks :)
Admin
You forgot the part where the bulk mailer actually charged the company ten times because their bill was in binary, dah-hur, dah-hur!
Admin
Ok! Remy Martin sock puppet count up to 3!
Admin
I disagree, but then again, I did see the discussion the other day between between who seemed confused at being called a sock puppet. My sarcasm detector seems broken, it would be a funny comment. Ah well, back to work I guess.
CAPTCHA: vereor, the sound made veering to not run over things
Admin
Of course they needed a bulk e-mailer. You have any idea how long it takes to print out 150000 messages, place them on a wood table, take a picture, scan the picture and send them off?