Many online merchants use a contact form for customer queries or
feedback, as opposed to providing their email address directly. Is
there any way one can determine the email address that's built into
such a form?

---

Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 13 Jan 2006 06:42 PST

In this particular instance there is no product ordering involved,
simply a customer service query. Also, there's no other email
reference on the site, so the only way to contact the company appears
to be via the form. I had thought perhaps that by right-clicking on
the form, the Properties choice might reveal the underlying email
address, but, of course, such is not the case. Guess I'll just use the
form, though I'd hoped to be able to communicate with the company
using Outlook Express, thereby being able to retain a copy of my
message and any subsequent email exchanges.

---

Clarification of Question by nautico-ga on 13 Jan 2006 07:02 PST

I figured out how to find the hidden email address. I right-clicked on
the form, then selected View Source, which caused all of the HTML code
to appear in a new window (Notepad). I next did a search on "@," and
found the hidden address!

It depends on how the form is being handled...
In most professionally designed sites the answer would be no as the
form is being sent to a server and the server is redirecting the
contents of the form to the appropriate email address...you would have
to know the conversion rule being used for the email address...this
would be different for every website.

Why not go to whois and write to the email contact of the website you
are trying to contact?

My 2 cents...

Good Luck.

When a merchant does this the order may be going to a drop shipment
company or some other service - this is obviously the way they are set
up to handle orders and attempting to place an order directly is
probably not going to work.

You can usually find another contact point on the site - if not, in my
experience it won't do any good to locate one some other way, they
just aren't prepared to deal with other methods of contact.

Sorry...didn't finish my comment! I had told you about professional
sites! Yes, most other sites just list the source code!