UK Businesses losing customers because they don't reply to emails

Why am I not surprised at this?

In this week's NMA we learn that '38% of UK consumers have decided not to use a business because of poor response to email queries, customer research specialist The Listening Company has found. It also found that 3 out of 10 consumers had difficulty finding contact details on websites.'

And then there are those who make it impossible to get off their mailing lists. Today I made 2 abortive attempts to 'unsubscribe' from emails, one was iStockphoto, whose emails contain a teeny weeny link at the foot telling you that To unsubscribe, Click Here and change your Control Panel settings. Please note this may take up to 2 weeks to process. And then you need to remember your login to access your control panel. Two weeks? Give me a break.

Then there was the lovely Pipex, t/a Supanames, with their press release emails coming from the attractive sounding noreply@supanames.co.uk telling me 'If you do not want to receive any more newsletters,  http://sitecontrol.supanames.co.uk/newsletter/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=a63def9b72fefea8af0c38057a32c2cc' - go ahead, feel free to click on it for me and unsubscribe me if you can. All I got was an error message. Nice!