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

http://couchraisin.com/post/2921948101/best-thank-you-for-your-order-email-ever

by devin • 16 years ago

48 28 16 years ago

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

wccrawford• 16 years ago

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.

oiujyhgtfrt• 15 years ago

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

Dav3xor• 15 years ago

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.

JoeAltmaier4• 16 years ago

Precious fusspot.

RiderOfGiraffes5• 16 years ago

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.

qeorge• 15 years ago

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.

midnightmonster• 15 years ago

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.

arethuza• 16 years ago

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

kjhgyjkikj2• 16 years ago

Pass?

nano81• 16 years ago

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

unignorant• 16 years ago

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.

bdb• 15 years ago

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

dennmart2• 15 years ago

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.

devin• 15 years ago

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.

dennmart2• 15 years ago

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.

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

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