E-Mail Gathers Dust at Some Top Firms

Many of the nation’s largest companies respond to e-mail at a snail’s pace, according to a recent survey of Fortune 100 firms by a Northern California software company.

Four companies took at least a week to reply to the simple e-mail query, “What is your corporate headquarters address?” sent during business hours on Nov. 9. One of the titans of the high-tech industry, Hewlett-Packard Co., took 23 days.

The survey was conducted by Brightware Inc., a Novato, Calif.-based company that provides e-mail management services.

There were a number of rapid repliers, including Texaco Inc., which responded to the query in four minutes. Albertson’s Inc. and Costco Cos. both replied within five minutes.

But overall, fewer than 15% responded within three hours, according to Chuck Williams, chief executive of Brightware. He added that 26% of the Fortune 100 companies either did not accept e-mail or made it so hard to find e-mail forms on their Web sites that a typical Internet user would probably give up looking.

Twelve companies, including Intel Corp. and Motorola Corp., required Web site visitors to provide detailed personal information before submitting a query, Williams said.