Ins and outs of BP

After being in the news for the wrong reasons recently, oil major BP seems to have found a way to sidestep media queries. An email to BP’s press office address in London regarding CEO Robert Dudley’s visit to India elicited an “Out of Office AutoReply”. Now, a person can be “out of office”, but can an entire office “be out of office”? If you open the mail, you get this strange response: “Thank you for your email; we’re not actually ‘out of office’.” It goes on to say it will reply “as soon as possible” to media queries and provides switchboard numbers for London and Houston press offices. Gulf of Mexico advertising support is directed to a media-buying agency and non-media enquiries get yet another board number.