The Keys To Successful Contact

Many of our readers here at ATS, both members and guests, have taken advantage of the "Contact Us" link that appears on the bottom of every page. For those who have never needed to, in a nutshell it is a form in which you can write comments, request assistance or otherwise correspond with the Amigos and Administration of ATS.

As the number of members and guests on ATS has increased so has the volume of mail received through that channel. The Amigos and Staff of ATS remain dedicated to the concept of open two way communication with our members and guests and to help that continue here are a few suggestions to take into account when using the Contact form to reach out to us.

Who Are You???

Believe it or not this is the mistake we run into most frequently. If you are an ATS member please include your username somewhere in your correspondence. Many of the emails we receive are from people who are experiencing technical problems with their accounts, particularly with passwords needing to be reset. If you don't include your username it becomes very difficult to assist you and will certainly make responding to your request take longer.

The second part of this problem is the return email address. Please remember when filling out a contact form we are relying on the email address you input as our way to reply to you. Very often we will attempt to reply to a request and the mail will bounce back. If your request is one that is asking for a response from us, please double check the address you've input into the form.

How can we help you?

The body of the message is the next critical element of contacting us. If your problem is a technical one please be as specific as possible. While we do have some very handy technical wizards on the team we are severely lacking in the clairvoyant department. Saying "your site doesn't work" makes it very difficult for us to help. Including some detail such as if it is a password problem, the appearance of an error, or the like will help us tremendously. Remember the desired effect here is for us to be able to look at the message and be able to resolve your issue as quickly as possible.

Just a little patience

There's no other way of putting it... we get a lot of messages. The goal is to help each and every person using the contact form to resolve their issue. A few things to keep in mind are that there are many people asking for help and a small team working on helping them. If it takes us a little while to get back to you please don't take that to mean we're ignoring you... consider the volume of mail, everyone's favorite issue - time zone differences - and of course the fact that some problems are a lot more difficult to fix than others.

What not to do

The above list is a somewhat concise list of things to do in order to help us utilize the contact form. Of course on the flip side there is also a small list of things not to do to accomplish that same goal.

Please do not use the contact form as a place to make comments that would otherwise not be permitted on ATS. If you're upset about something here (and we're all human and make mistakes sometimes) and you're using the contact form to let us know, please do so civilly. If one has a complaint against a policy of ours or against a staff action we want to get it resolved and move on. Unleashing a two page long rant loaded with foul language and personal insults is not the way to do that. The same way the Staff does their best to assist with these requests a certain level of civility is required. Messages containing pages of swearing and insults will be deleted.

Please do not use the contact form as a replacement for the complaint/alert features. As most of you know, when you file a complaint or hit the alert button a message is instantly sent to the staff forum where our Moderators are able to see it and take appropriate action. The two things to keep in mind here are that word "instant" and the number of Moderators. A complaint/alert will be seen by far more people in far more time zones than the contact form. A complaint is also submitted instantly rather than going through slower email channels. When reporting a T&C violation please do so via complaint/alert first. You are guaranteed to get a quicker response and resolution.

Finally, please take into account that the contact us feature is just that... contact "us". We are unable to pass messages along to people who are not ATS staff members. Often times emails will come in asking us to pass messages to people who have been guests on ATS Mix or requesting information regarding people who have posted here or appeared as guests or experts in some fashion. Unfortunately we are unable to accomodate these requests. The contact form is for issues with ATS only.

Finally a summary!

The purpose of this message is to help. If you've used the contact form before and haven't been satisfied we apologize. The idea here is to try and streamline the process so that every request will be answered to the member/guest's satisfaction. Following the above written guidelines will help the Staff of AboveTopSecret.com help you when issues may arise.

In the end what the Amigos and Staff want is to be able to help as many of our readers out as quickly as possible. With your assistance I know we can do that.

Thank you very much!

Djarums
ATS Admin