E-mail autoresponders suck. Please stop using them.

I find it particularly annoying, when I write a mail to a list, like say, the NANOG list, and get emails in reply like:

From: EMAIL ELIDED

To: William Pitcock <EMAIL ELIDED>

Subject: NAME ELIDED is out of the office.

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:02:35 -0400 (11:02 CDT)

I will be out of the office starting 06/23/2008 and will not return until 06/26/2008.

If this matter is urgent please contact NAME ELIDED at XXX-XXX-XXXX or XXX-XXX-XXXX

This really sucks, for multiple reasons. Mostly, that:

  • Nobody cares if you are out of the office. If they need you right now, they will call you on your cell phone.
  • It’s a mailing list. I didn’t directly e-mail the person which sent me that anything.

So please, for the good of all of the Internet, stop using autoresponders, because they are hideously lame. Or, at least, put something like AUTO-REPLY in your autoresponder so we can just delete the spam you insist on sending us.

Thanks lazyweb.