MBTA Customer Service Time Warp

By | January 22, 2009

Reprinting without comment (except some emphasis) an email message I received this morning:

From: "do_not_reply@mbta.com" <do_not_reply@mbta.com>
To: jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us
Cc: chowze@mbta.com
Subject: Thank you for contacting the MBTA
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:38:28 -0500

We appreciate your business and value your feedback.  A customer service
issue was logged on 2007-05-22 at 10:35:05

A tracking number of 00054837 has been assigned to this call.  Please
reference this number on any additional communications you may have
regarding this issue.

The information you provided has been forwarded to the appropriate group.
If additional actions are required, a member from that department will
follow up on your issue.

Should you have additional questions or concerns regarding this issue,
please contact the Customer Support Services at 617-222-3200 or
800-392-6100, Monday through Friday ,6:30 AM to 8:00 PM and Sat/Sun from
7:30 AM to 6:00 PM.

** NOTE ** This email is being sent from an automated system and is an
unmonitored account.  Please do not reply to this message.

...

The punchline is that I received exactly the same message (except for the “…” at the end) on May 22, 2007.  And yes, I did check the “Received:” headers and confirmed that it was the MBTA’s servers that regenerated the message:

Received: from mbta.com ([131.108.100.65])
	by message1.mbta.com with SMTP; Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:38:29 -0500
Share

2 thoughts on “MBTA Customer Service Time Warp

  1. jik Post author

    I wouldn’t be surprised if in a day or two someone from MBTA notices and sends out an apology email…

    Indeed:

    From: "cssheat@mbta.com" 
    To: jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us
    Cc: chowze@mbta.com, kmennella@mbta.com, jleblanc@mbta.com, MCRS2TEAM@mbta.com
    Subject: Thank you for contacting the MBTA
    Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:38:38 -0500
    
    Due to a technical problem, an email was sent to you in error on January
    22, 2009.  This email was for a prior issue you reported to the MBTA.   We
    apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you.
    
    Please feel free to contact our Customer  Support  Services Department at
    (617) 222-3200 or (800) 392-6100 if you have any questions.
    
    Sincerely,
    
    MBTA Customer Support Services
    
    *** DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL. IT IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY ***
    
    ...
    
    Reply
  2. abbasegal

    Things like this happen periodically — presumably someone did some maintenance and accidentally caused a whole bunch of emails to be re-sent. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a day or two someone from MBTA notices and sends out an apology email…

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *