Question, I emailed support and told asked them if I could use protonmail’s password-encrypted email feature or a pgp key to encrypt my order number (instead of putting it in the subject). I have sent several emails and received no reply what so ever. I also asked them to just acknowledge the email and let me know if they thought it was going to take a while to research. So wanted to ask, will purism support literally just not even reply to a tech support request unless the order number is in the email subject? Is there some sort of automation system that I might be getting filtered out by? Or is it usually just this slow?
2 Likes
Can you provide more information about the timeline of the emails that you sent?
1 Like
Purism support is incredibly backlogged as they make their way through tickets and additional staff is being hired/onboarded.
6 Likes
I sent one friday, I sent that with a pgp signature, the guide on emailing purism says the typical response time for tech support is inside 6 hours, I emailed kindof late so I sent another email the next day without the signature (just in case that some how made it difficult to open or something). Then I emailed a couple of “P.s” emails. The next day I sent them I followed up with some more info. I waited until the weekend was over and sent another email (with some simple info).
Yesterday I sent another one and put “[Would like to encrypt order number…]” in the subject in case it got filtered by an automated system (this was meant to somewhat mimic the format of [ORDER#] SUBJECT as seen in the this post) and asked for a reply as to weather or not I could send my order number encrypted (just wanted to know if my emails were being seen/reviewed really).
2 Likes
Okay, if thats what it is I understand, I just wanted to know if they were actually going through to a human that could read them/were going to be reviewed/ticketed at some point, thank you.
2 Likes
No, because that requires an out-of-band secure communication method for bootstrapping the secret, in which case you may as well use that for your entire support ticket instead.
No, the order number is required in the email subject for technical support, but PGP encryption is optional.
Probably not, considering the amount of emails they get:
Possibly:
No, the Purism support team has reduced capacity at the moment:
2 Likes
So you started late on a Friday, then there was the weekend (when Purism employees are likely not at work), then Monday, and again Tuesday. I don’t think it’s unusual that they haven’t responded yet in such a short time frame.
In fact, in that link about how to properly send emails to Purism, @mladen writes:
1 Like
I didnt send one over the weekend because I figured that would be the case. I understand its typical response time, but I just wanted to know if my emails where going to someone or were filtered out (that is why I made this thread).
1 Like
Thought I would give it a shot, considering Purism staff have pgp signatures on their blog posts, I thought if one company would support it they might haha.
Though considiring that even with “privacy” email services even when they “zero-access encrypt” the emails, the subjects are not encrypted (I think as is the case with proton mail). Maybe they might want to consider allowing people to encrypt subject lines or put encrypted info in the body of the message (with a tag in the subject line to indicate as such). Admittedly 99.9% of people (likely including myself) its not necessary if the order number doesn’t make sense to anyone but you and Purism (assuming its linked to other records like name and address that stay at Purism).
Good to know, thank you
1 Like
And that is one of the problems in using email for support. Once that is solved (by using a web interface to Support), all of the complication of whether the Subject is encrypted will go away.
2 Likes
Is that going to happen?
1 Like
My understanding, as an outsider, is that options are being studied. I have no authority to commit Purism as to when and if that will lead to that improvement.
2 Likes
Bit of an unfair question too you haha. Thank you for answering with what you know and being clear
1 Like
One thing that might be good in the mean time would be an automated reply just letting people know they reached the right inbox and someone will review it and it was not filtered out (or even an estimated time of response/how many emails are ahead of them).
1 Like
Doesn’t that kind of assume sequential processing? It could easily be that your request gets looked at, it is recognised quickly that the request is blocked by one thing or another, so the request gets put to one side, and requests that are received later end up completing first.
There may also be confidentiality / privacy issues with revealing how many other emails are around.
Over the years, I’ve spent a few years on the phone to call centres. In my experience very few of them implement the functionality of telling you how many calls are ahead of you in the queue while you listen to music-on-hold. It seems to me that 100% of the time they are experiencing higher than usual call volumes. 
2 Likes
Maybe instead of “ahead of you” maybe just a total and capacity / estimated wait time?
Maybe
Few, but I do find it nice to know
I would say most haha to the I have often wondered if they just say that regardless of how many calls there actually are
2 Likes
Also I want to say I did get a reply from purism support a couple probably a few days after the above comments
3 Likes
Additionally I sent another issue to purism last night, and their gitlab support bot assigned me a ticket number and emailed me, so: feedback!!
4 Likes