Incorrect email from, envelope-sender and reply-to addresses

Companies seem to be getting worse at email these days. Now email is almost considered a shot in the dark, with either an invalid from, return-path and sender address, or one which which send any reply straight to /dev/null. And now some even bounce back saying there will be no response to emails and we should call a premium rate call centre number.

Take the example of this marketing email I got from Holiday Extras. The return address was agent@ukex11.pur3.net and the from address was . Reply to the email and you get a bounce straight back. They should have set them to customerrelations@holidayextras.com!

Some companies now insist on filing any "email" contact with them in a tiny web-form, which I don't think really is fair to really call email. This means we don't have a copy of the "email" in our "Sent" folder with the rest of our email, and we have no record that we have contacted the company though the tiny web-form, so when they don't reply we don't have a copy of what we sent them or any proof.

Often the web-forms will have bugs, like a 255 character limit, or a silly set of blocked characters which includes question marks and commas.

Got another one today saying "NOTE: This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply to this email."... but when I email these companies I don't hide my email address.. The same when they call me from Withheld numbers..

So, any companies reading this.. switch back to standard email, and provide good customer service!