PETERBE.COM

mailto: considered stupid, especially with ?subject

25^th of April 2009

I don't have any stats to back this up but if I look around the office almost a lot of people use Gmail or Hotmail or something web based. My family uses Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail (and me on Gmail) for example. So it bugs me when websites use the mailto: thing. Especially if they rely on the Subject line.

Here for example, on the EDF Energy Contact us page, they have a long list of "Email us" links. They're almost all going to mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com but all with a different subject line:

 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Dual Fuel enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Dual Fuel sales enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Energy efficiency enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Priority Services enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Electricity prepayment enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Gas prepayment enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Home movers enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Green Tariff enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Meter Reading enquiry
 mailto:customer_correspondence@edfenergy.com?subject=Bill payment enquiry
 mailto:myaccount@edfenergy.com?subject=MyAccount query
 ...

Does that mean that I have to somehow copy the Subject line from each so that my email gets routed to the right department? I just don't know. Why can't they have different email address for each thing or a web form where I can email them there and then?

Using mailto: should be done very sparingly. Considering that most people (like my mom) don't know to right-click and select "Copy email address" I prefer this way to show an email address:

 <a href="mailto:more@userfriendly.com">more@userfriendly.com</a>

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