I wanted to report an issue about a problem with our building, let’s say that the widget frobnicators were not working. I went to the internal Widget Frobnicators Web site, and it was very pretty, with an FAQ about the current supplier of widget frobnicators, where to look up more information about how the widget frobnicators work, how you can buy your own widget frobnicator for home use, and even how you can become a Widget Frobnicator Ambassador for your building. Widget Frobnicator Ambassadors receive additional information about widget frobnicators and get to participate in the widget frobnicator selection process, among other things.

I didn’t find a link on the Widget Frobnicator Web site that let me search for a Widget Frobnicator Ambassador in my building, or even a list of all Widget Frobnicator Ambassadors. However, I did find a link called Contact Us. Awesome. It is a mailto link addressed to the Widget Frobnicator Ambassadors distribution list.

I composed a message explaining the problem I was observing and hit Send.

The message was returned as undeliverable.

“You do not have permission to send messages to this distribution list.”

Nice going, Widget Frobnicator team. Apparently you don’t want to be contacted at all. Maybe it’s a front for money laundering.

(I was able to report the problem by other means, and it was resolved later that day, so everything worked out okay in the end, but as far as I can tell, the Widget Frobnicators Web site still provides no way for you to contact them.)