I just love stories like this. There's a survey in Australia that demonstrates how few companies bother responding to e-mailed queries. Apparently some 60 per cent of large organisations simply don't bother answering questions sent by mail.
I have to declare some amusement here. In 1997 I edited a work called "The E-Commerce Handbook" and one of the points made by one of our contributors was that e-commerce or e-business had to become a real e-business and not simply tack an electronic element onto an existing business model.
11 years later and it appears people still have yet to learn the lesson. This might be a good one to show your board when they next complain that the IT department isn't delivering business improvements. The chances are very good that it is indeed - but the rest of the business isn't acting on it.