I sometimes wish customer support staff should simply not be able to use canned response templates. More times than not, I find support people don’t read your email at all — instead they seem to glance at it, find a few keywords, and match it to a canned response they have. Prepared.

Here’s today’s exchange with NetNation/Hostway, the provider I used in the past (and still, sadly, retain some domain names with).

Enjoy this nonsensical response.

Their original email — 2:24 a.m.
The service(s) listed below are about to expire and require your immediate attention. You must renew or your service(s) will be deactivated upon expiration. Your service(s) and possibly your business will be interrupted. Domain: thirdtuesdayvancouver.com.

My response — 11:19 a.m.
I would like to renew this, but when I go to account manager (following your link) it doesn’t show me that domain. Help! I do not want this domain deleted.

Their “response” — 11:48 a.m.
We received a request that you no longer wanted this domain, so it was closed, and autorenew was removed. If this is no longer the case, please provide us with the last 4 characters of your account manager password, and we will re-open it, to enable renewal of the domain.

Do you have any experiences like this that turned frustratingly comical?