The Best "Thank You for Your Order" Email I Have Ever Received | Hacker News Reader

The Best "Thank You for Your Order" Email I Have Ever Received

couchraisin.com

48 pointsdevin28 comments

I've received a whole lot of "receipt" emails, but this one changed my day.

Although not a duplicate, this story/email was submitted just over a month ago. I'll repeat here what I said there:

    Personal opinion only, but ...

    I find this sort of thing annoying. It would be
    especially annoying if I bought more than one thing,
    unless they changed it every time. But that, in turn,
    would force me to read through the entire email every
    time just to make sure they really were just saying -
    it's shipped.

    In short, life's short, and I've got better things to
    do than read through an entire, cutesy email to make
    sure that it's saying what I think it's saying, and
    not saying anything unexpected.

    It's also lying. I bet they didn't do any of that.

    "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" expresses clearly the
    difference between "Funny Always", "Funny Once", and
    "Funny Never". For me, this is somewhere between the
    last two. I hope it doesn't catch on.

    </rant>

There's a lot more to the discussion from last time - you can read it here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2008639

I halfway agree. It would depend on the company, for me.

If I ordered from a stuffy corporate mega-giant like Amazon, I'd be slightly annoyed. If I ordered from somewhere serious, like ordering $2k+ computer parts I'd think they were clowns and wonder if I made a mistake.

However, if I ordered from Woot.com, I'd know it was just their brand of humor and appreciate it.

CDBaby strikes me as the corporate type, so I'd be slightly annoyed, I think.

It's not as annoying as trying to download an update from MEGA compoter corp and having to click through dozens of pages about not downloading to N Korea and having to read and agree to some prose that MEGA corp is a wholly owned subsidiary of MEGA corp global except the download is being provided by MEGA corp services which is the luxembourg tax haven of MEGA corp .......

Just to check that I'm clikigng on the windows 32bit version

Haha, this is extremely funny, since that email was written by Derek Sivers; then owner of CD Baby, and an incredibly popular contributer around here.

Precious fusspot.

Thank you for that neat, clear and concise evaluation of my personality. Note that I didn't include "accurate".

Last time this was submitted, and I replied, someone asked:

  > why do you hate fun?

My reply to that basically covers your comment, so I thought I'd include it here (with minor editing):

    It's clear that you think this sort of email is cute
    and fun. Possibly I used to think so too, 30 years
    ago. Now, however, I've seen too many of them, read
    too many of them, felt cheated of time by too many of
    them.

    I don't hate fun. I love having fun. I seek out having
    fun. I make time to have fun. What's not fun, pretty
    much by definition, is someone else's attempt at humor
    that is not, to me, funny.

    If it had been me receiving that email I'd've resented
    the 30 seconds it took to check that its content was
    "CD posted", and that everything else was there purely
    for entertainment. I didn't find it entertaining. My
    tastes have changed over the years.

    So, in short, I love fun, have lots of fun, and think
    lots of things are funny. That wasn't one of them.

No, you got me wrong. I get it - you hate these things. Its your compulsion to ruin everyone else's fun by posting wet-blanket pedantic diatribes against them that makes it a "precious fusspot" moment.

Be honest - the email subject told you everything you wanted to know - you didn't spend any time at all reading the crap - you just have to vent about it.

As a veteran venter I have been in that boat. Been a 'precious fusspot' myself more than once. Man enough to admit it.

>Be honest - the email subject told you everything you wanted to know...

From what I can tell by searching around, the actual subject title of this email is "CD Baby Loves you", not "CD Baby order shipped", so one does have to read this email to find out what it means.

However, let's assume that the title did say that the order shipped. One still has to look in the email to see if every ordered item shipped, or whether any of them are backordered, or arriving in multiple shipments. Maybe a person placed two orders at the same time -- which one shipped?

Let's assume a person only ordered one cd. Ey still has to read the entire thing, because maybe there's some content in it that ey need to act on (e.g., the wrong shipping address, or the wrong charge amount). If that was the case, and someone didn't read the email, whose fault would it be when the mistake was found out later? Everyone laughs when people don't read a software EULA that promises the creator the user's soul, saying "well, people should have read the EULA". How much would the cd buyer be blamed if ey was charged double and didn't find out about it until a month later, when eir credit card statement came in? "Well, it was in your order confirmation; you should have read it."

And arguing that the CDBaby order confirmation doesn't contain the price, and it contains the address at the top, so my argument doesn't apply is not the issue. How do you know there's no data requiring action in the text unless you read it?

Because its whimsical nonsense.

Exactly, and it wastes my time trying to work out what it means, rather than letting me get on with things that are more important, more fun, and more rewarding.

I'm not complaining that it's whimsical nonsense, I'm complaining that it's whimsical nonsense that other people insist I should find fun, and then they force it on me whether I want it or not.

I'm 50. I'm no longer a teenager, so I no longer know everything. My life is half over. Please, let me choose where I find my fun.

And GET OFF MY LAWN!

How did you determine it was whimsical nonsense, and only whimsical nonsense that did not contain anything that needed to be acted on? Were you able to do so without reading it?

>> precious fusspot > Thank you for that neat, clear and concise evaluation of my personality. Note that I didn't include "accurate".

> My reply to that basically covers your comment, so I thought I'd include it here ... > If it had been me receiving that email I'd've resented the 30 seconds it took to check that its content was "CD posted",

Sounds like you'll spend a lot of time whining about 30 seconds you didn't actually lose...and do it again when the same thread comes up again on HN.

"precious fusspot" sounds accurate:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precious 4. affectedly or excessively delicate

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fusspot Brit informal a person who fusses unnecessarily

I'm choosing to spend time trying to save other people time, and giving them a gift of an alternative viewpoint.

That's my choice to make - it's one of the ways I try to make the world better.

Besides, I type really fast.

(now see if you can work out when I'm being sarcastic, and when I'm being genuine.)

Versus making the world better with a little whimsy?

Both take 30 seconds to read. Both are essentially a waste of time. I guess we might argue somebody, somewhere finds diatribe engaging. Whimsy also has its audience, witness the gentle soul who made the original post.

Look, let's just agree to disagree. You find it whimsical and gently amusing. I find it an infuriating waste of my time and about as funny as a whoopee cushion. I've made my case, you've made yours. I claim that doing this will needlessly annoy paying customers. You think it doesn't matter.

Now I really won't waste any more time on it.

No no, both keep going... I'm getting popcorn.

"Sounds like you'll spend a lot of time whining about 30 seconds you didn't actually lose"

I'm sure that there is a business owner that is glad to have his perspective on this. It could save them from annoying their customers with cutesy emails. That is one of the benefits of HN, to which RiderOfGiraffes is contributing. Consider that before you level insults at him.

In a way, I think that's sort of the point: that some people won't like it, for the reasons you mentioned.

It gives the sense that real people run the company. A megacorp would never send that email.

For whimsy that doesn't waste my time, my favorite recent example is when I ordered a giant gummy bear on a stick for my brother for Christmas (we have a candy gag gift tradition).

It was shipped in a box in a box, of course, and the outer box was padded with packing peanuts. When I opened the outer box, at the very top in the middle was one of those rubber monster finger tip puppets with the wiggly arms--chewing on a packing peanut. Made my day. If they were really smart, he'd have been chewing on something wit the company name on it, which I think would increase the chance that I would remember it now.

Maybe it's dour Scot thing - but if I got an email like that I would think they were taking the p*ss.

Pass?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss

What I meant - with tongue firmly in cheek - was that the symbols P, asterisk, S, S symbolise the word 'piss' as surely as the word 'piss'.

I remember getting this email when I bought a CD from them in 2007. I loved it, and thought the exact same thing as the author: "I'll do business with them again."

Four years have passed and I haven't bought a single thing from the company since then. I've just gotten what I needed elsewhere, either due to price or convenience. The email is nice, but it didn't really do much to make me always want to go to them first.

I skimmed the email. I found one of the lines interesting. I kept reading. It made me smile. Who would've thunk that so many people can get upset about a little fun in their inbox.

I opt-in on whimsical, fun email. "Order Shipped" => Boring.

I probably don't fit the target demographic for this kind of email, but it seems to me that CDBaby is subtly mocking its customers.

I have no idea why they would do so, but hyperbole can cut both ways.

All that fanfare and... they sent your package via USPS.

I actually prefer USPS when I get some stuff (smaller items, like CDs) shipped to my apartment - They can actually use the mailbox instead of leaving it outside of my door, where it can easily be swiped by someone else. For larger items, I just have them shipped to the office.

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