alasdair_stark
Most of our big customers were real estate agencies where it felt pretty spammy but the selling point was that people were more likely to open a personalised letter compared to an email. Some of our marketing focused on poking fun at people using franking machines!
I remember a more interesting customer that sent out parking violations to individuals. Along with the basic mail merge, the letters would include images of their vehicles parked where they shouldn't be.
The biggest problem we had was with consistent print quality. We sent batch files to be printed out by different printing companies but there would often be problems with things like alignment and image quality. Even though we had test letters sent to our office every day we'd always be stressed out when a new customer was coming on board and testing the service - they'd often receive a couple of dodgy letters!
In the end the company was absorbed by a larger IT business - I think they just wanted the developers. They wanted me to come work full time for them but I went back to University to finish off my degree and did some part-time remote work for them. Can't find any trace of the company online now.
We were told that the Māori considered the river to be a person and as a sign of respect we should not wash ourselves in it. Aside from that, it did not effect our trip.
If anyone is interested, there's more information here - https://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-go/ma...
I wish that Banks had expanded on the idea with further novels as I really enjoyed reading about the cyclical rise and fall of societies while humanity explored different social/political structures, hoping to achieve some form of long-term stability.