I canceled an award a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, I received the receipts for the redeposit fee along with a letter signed by Cristina Zanchi (who left over a year ago) that said:

"To give you even more opportunities to enjoy yourself, we will always be happy to offer you Miles under our programme."

What an odd thing to say (and even stranger way to say it).

But that's not all! They mangled my address in a most creative way as well, in what I can only assume was human intervention. My address is:

Carrer Josep Irla xx-xx

but on this letter it was changed to

Calle Josep Irla Los Catalanes

Luckily it's a very short street so the letter eventually found me. So they switched languages (from Catalan to Spanish) and then added (in Spanish) a comment about "the Catalans" and removed the house number. Given that Josep Irla was the exiled president of the Catalan government during Franco's regime, I think it's an interesting, and probably editorial, change.

Strange.

Well this could be a long thread. My favourite which I think I have posted many times on FT is this response I got to a question I asked on their webpage (original here):

Dear Madam, Sir,

We are sorry to inform you that due to unforeseen weather conditions at Schiphol airport over the
last days we were unable to provide you with a reply to your previous email.

Should you still require an answer to your previous question, we would
kindly ask you to send a new email to us via the contact button on our
website at www.klm.com

The contact button can be located on the left hand toolbar.

Please do not automatically reply to this email as we cannot answer such
replies.

Thank you and please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Yours sincerely,

KLM/Northwest Airlines

Ok to send out an email that my answer will be delayed, but to delete because of bad weather?? It is like they are thinning among their emails to see who are really persistent. This email pretty much convinced me to leave FB.

Computer program used to generate automatic responses to e-mail requests?

Mine's not as spectacularly silly as Gnopps', it's more blas� and bang-your-head-in-the-wall kind of annoying. It's a response to my request on the website concerning specific conditions for a Hertz promo which were not clear to me. The response to my request for clarification is of course:

Sir,

Thank you very much for your recent communication with the Flying Blue Customer Service Center.

First of all, we invite you to check the web site for all information and conditions relating to promotions we are currently offering to Flying Blue members.

Besides, your Flying Blue team remains at your disposal should you require further information either by telephone (no), by fax (no) or online at www.airfrance.com or www.klm.com.

We thank you for your continued loyalty to the Flying Blue programme.

Yours sincerely,

Your Flying Blue team




Some, even many of you will say this is not strange. At all. This is FB. Yet I tell you, out there in the real world this is strange. Honest!