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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I'd rather them not send an apology email... because then I'd have two useless emails. And in the grand scheme of things, it's literally just one more email I receive during the day.

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I for one am happy to know that they're running integration tests at all, so I don't think they have anything to apologize for. It was just an email -- I get many uninvited emails per day. This uninvited email happened to be from an engineer rather than a marketer.

The first thought I had, though, was if some team decided to pull down their prod DB for testing so they had 'realistic data'.

Because that would be a much bigger problem than sending an email by accident.

Of course you say sorry after you bump into someone. It's basic courtesy.

Yeah but you don't call up some stranger on the phone to say sorry for pocket calling them.

These were most likely paying customers on the quick dial.

I can't get HBO max here (UK) and I got the email. I don't recall signing up for anything.

If I get a moment I might GDPR the info out of them but honestly loads of spammers have my email it's nbd.

e: Going by past emails someone decided to change their account's email to mine (which HBO was fine with, no confirmation required, hope the user can still use their account).. Don't you just love end users.

Be glad! Sounds like you could have a subscription for free.

Sounds like it could be the scam where they put in your email address and hope that you pay the bill for them:

https://jameshfisher.com/2018/04/07/the-dots-do-matter-how-t...

Ooh I'd not come across that one. Cheeky bastards (if so)

Good point, but considering a lot of people are probably calling/emailing HBO without any sort of response, asking what the email is about.. it might be more fair to say that the stranger called back, you didn't pick up, and now you're calling back to clear the air.

If that's the case then ~20 people bump into me on a daily basis.

I think in the case the first email is too cryptic not to follow up without being unsettling to people.

I got it. It one line and includes the word test so I just ignored it. It wasn’t scary but it wasn’t clear what it was.

HBO should email everyone to give us all the choice of whether to get an apology email.

However - most of HBO's customers are non-technical and will be wondering what kind of test this is and if they should be worried.

Well, I got my integration test e-mail yesterday but still no apology e-mail, so I think they listened to you.

It depends what the email was about. If its content reads like "test email" or some nonsense like that, nevermind. But if it looks like a legit email that would have significant consequences for the recipient, were it legit, it should definitely be clarified what's up. Also, a well-crafted email will hopefully prevent people invoking the GDPR on the sender.

I got one. It says:

Integration Test Email #1

This template is used by integration tests only.

The first email was useful to someone! An apology email is useless to everyone.

I disagree, it's definitely useful. It's useless only if it feels/is dishonest. One way to avoid sounding dishonest is letting the dev team write the small apology piece.

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