Indifferent about Rediff.com

It is sad. It used to be one of my favourite sites. But, it seem to have gone down the drain - both in content and technology.

This morning I tried send feedback to Ajith Balakrishnan at the email id posted on rediff.com. Here is my letter and what happened afterwards.

To: ajit-balakrishnanATrediff.co.in
Subject: Rediff: New look, same annoying popups and pop unders
Sent: Thursday, September 1, 2005 1:26 PM
Hi,
Back in 1996 I first went to Rediff on the Net and loved it. Nowadays, I dread going there. Every time I get to your site I am bombarded with at least three pop-unders and a few popups. And, this is in addition to those irritating psychedelic colored ads that seem to be everywhere on the page.

I understand that you guys are a portal and need to make money by putting ads. But, spend some money on site design, navigation and usability. See how Yahoo does it - they do it well. The new rediff.com site does not address these issues.

The problem has become so bad that I stopped going to rediff.com on a regular basis. Instead, I use msn's start.com to read the rediff feeds.

Please do something about the site usability and those irritating ads.

Thanks

And, the response I got was this

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at crimson.rediff.co.in.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

ajit-balakrishnanATrediff.co.in:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

--- Enclosed is a copy of the message.

I generally do not give up that easily. So, I went to rediff.com, navigated to the feedback section and tried emailing customer service. And, guess what I got

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail1.rediff.co.in.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

customersupportATrediff.co.in:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

--- Enclosed is a copy of the message.

At this point I gave up.

PS: I replaced @ with AT in this posting to save these sorry souls from spam. But, looks like their email box is well protected.