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Previous: Coupon on box of Kix cereal | Main | Next: RealPlayer message center
March 30, 2007 12:03 AM
Broken: NaviSite notification
Rosie Ruley Atkins writes:
We really liked that our network provider NaviSite "successfully failed over" and then notified us.
They're taking a page from JetBlue, except that we didn't notice any spelling errors in our JetBlue apology.
A failover is a valid technical term. It means transferring the active connection automatically from a bad one to a good one. The broken part is that they sent out a letter to the average user who has no clue what a failover is.
The effect of that message would be that I'd think twice about using the company. If they can't get a simple memo right, why should I trust them with anything important? No, I'd automatically failover to a competent outfit.
It's not too broken. They either didn't check it too carefully, or assumed the recipient would know the terminology; they could have made it clearer, but either way not a big deal because you can figure out the meaning from the rest of the paragraph.
Hey! Look! Listen!
Spelling aside, just look at how awkwardly worded the message is. Just take the opening sentence: "The purpose of this communication is to notify you that...". What a waste of words and time. JetBlue does a much better job of getting right to the point and sounding like an actual person. The jargon ('failover') doesn't help either.
Failover is a real term that is used correctly here. What makes it funny is that the phrase "successfully failed" appears at the end of the line.
A more common word such as "switched", "changed", or "moved" would have been a better choice here. The spelling errors are definitely broken.
^As for the awkward wording, most memos, contracts, or other business documents do that. I once saw a photo release form titled "2006-2007 Consent, Release, Hold Harmless, and Authorization to Reproduce Physical Likeness".
Well yeah Jetblue does a better job, Navisite's Income and money to spend on such things as proofreaders for a time-sensitive matter is probaly not even 1/10th of what Jetblue can spend..
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Previous: Coupon on box of Kix cereal | Main | Next: RealPlayer message center
Boy...you just can't trust spell-checker to catch every mistake or grammatical error. It usually helps to proof-read a letter like this before sending it out...
Posted by: ashleyriot_vs at March 30, 2007 01:27 AM