So you guys remember that FOI request to AmbVic I was considering last month? Well I decided to go ahead and make it. They seemed a little, um, unsure about what I was asking for. They misspelt my name, deemed my request invalid because they thought I was requesting information about an ambulance attendance so they wanted ID, a phone number, and more information. Then 12 minutes later they sent me another email stating they realised I was not requesting that information (but nothing else) then an hour later sent a third email apologising stating they realised I was not requesting information about an ambulance attendance, I didn't need to provide ID, and I did not need to provide a phone number.
Well, they finally processed it and provided a list of all the branch locations and their addresses today. But they sent it as an encrypted excel workbook thing that they didn't provide me permission to open...
Also, I don't want to rag on them too much, but their emails have had so many typos and grammatical errors I found it kind of concerning.
A lot of FoI requests come from the media (Josh Taylor from The Guardian is notorious for them), or from industry groups, businesses, and parliamentary staff.
They're probably not used to media requests that have come through from the customer service team, rather than their media relations team.
Typos in internal emails are not that surprising.
Did you end up cracking the spreadsheet? Did you find out anything interesting from the documents you got?