When You Shouldn’t Use a Company’s Contact Form
- May 22, 2020
- Bradley Taylor
We have all submitted a contact form through a website before. And most of us have probably had the experience of submitting a contact form and getting an error message or never hearing back from the company for which we were attempting to contact.
Contact forms can break. In my 18 years in this business I have seen it all. And I have seen many contact forms simply stop working on their own. Usually it has something do with server upgrades at the host company or an outdated version of php running on the site, but the fact is it happens for any one of numerous reasons.
Sometimes the owner or contact person at the company will change their email address and never update the form. This happens all the time and months can pass before they realize what is happening.
This is why I suggest only using a contact form if you are requiring more information from the company. If it is a service that you need done ASAP then I suggest calling the company. This way there is no guess-work involved.
If there is an email address listed at the site, this is a better option than the contact form. Direct emails get a better response rate than contact forms. But still I would call if your request is urgent or important.
At Olympus Web we routinely check all of our clients contact forms to make sure that they work. Any missed emails is a potentially missed client. And we won’t allow that to happen.