 | Contact Us Ways to get in touch This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.{a} |
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We welcome feedback from our readers
We welcome
your feedback!
{1}
For general information about communications to and from St Helena please see our page Communications.
If you have a question: before you contact us please could you check that your question isn’t already answered on Saint Helena Island Info. Try pages Visitor Information, Frequently Asked Questions about St Helena and Help With for most common queries. We may not to respond to questions about subjects fully covered in our pages.
Please note that communications to and from St Helena are less reliable than in most developed countries, due to telephone, Internet and power outages. If your message is not answered, and it does not ask a question already fully covered on this site, please re-send it.
By Email (preferred)
Our preferred method for being contacted is email. We get many emails per day and try to get a reply back within 48 hours{2} whenever possible, even if it is only We’ve no idea - we’ll ask around and get back to you…
NB: If you need to communicate a location to us please see ‘How to communicate a location to us’.
Junk Email
Please note that we don’t need:
SEO work to help us become #1 on Google (in most relevant queries we already are!). Also don’t bother telling us that you have studied our website and that it has the power to earn greater revenue (if you don’t know why we find these funny see our page About This Site).
A Chinese supplier of concrete, light fittings, paper bags, flange grommits, grunge wanglers or, for that matter, any other manufactured product.
Any unbelievable offers (as per your description, we don’t believe it).
To read your research paper on Lemming-farming in Mongolia, or any other subject of absolutely no relevance to St Helena.
If you want our attention for your SEO services here’s an offer: send us just one FREE improvement suggestion that is relevant and that we can implement at no cost to us. If we like (and can use) your idea then we will respond to your email. The rest go in the recycling bin…
We also binned this one:
I am a producer of yak meat, please contact me if you need, I will give you a satisfactory price and high-quality products. Our company has many years of experience in the yak meat industry.
Finally, we also received this:
From: Bennet Russell [russellbennet3311@hotmail.com] Sent: 10 June 2018 15:34 To: john@sainthelenaisland.info Subject: My Regards
Hello I am Mr Dickson Government contractor by profession connected with formal leader, i need your assistant of transferring and investing $66.500 million this money were set aside for investment unfortunately new Government took over the set ,this money is secure where it was deposited i am in charged now i am ready to provide the money to you for partnership business if you are ready let me know for us to arrange and discuss in full details on how to move the money to you in your country for profitable joint venture I wait to hear from you. My Regards
We didn’t know this scam was still circulating! Naturally we did not respond…☺
Via our Social Media sites
Twitter™: @SaintHelenaInfo{3}
Facebook™: www.facebook.com/sainthelenaislandinfo
We use social media primarily as a means of broadcasting information about Saint Helena Island Info; for example to notify site updates. We check messages on these networks only occasionally so it is more reliable to contact us by email.
NB: Due to the manifest issues that Twitter™ is currently experiencing we have suspended use of our Twitter™ Feed until further notice.
It has been pointed out to us that people sometimes use the Comment facility on our Social Media feeds to raise issues or promote causes that are nothing to do with St Helena or Saint Helena Island Info. Apart from deleting these comments when we spot them we have no control over this. The presence of a Comment does not mean we approve of or support the views expressed.
By Post
P.O. Box 37,
Jamestown,
Island of St Helena{4}
South Atlantic Ocean
STHL 1ZZ
Does anyone use post anymore? Whatever you send will take ages to reach us and unless what you ask is really fascinating we probably won’t be able to afford the cost of replying. You would be better to use a more 21st Century means of communicating, like email.
Unless you’re sending us a lawsuit, of course; but frankly, why bother? Your legal system almost certainly has no jurisdiction here, so maybe best to raise whatever your problem is with us by email and we can take it from there…
Text Message (SMS)
You cannot text us - we do not have a mobile (‘cell’) telephone and in any case our local network has trouble receiving SMS messages from overseas.
Telephone
Note that telephone calls to St Helena are expensive and, due to satellite lag, can be quite difficult - you speak then there’s a couple of seconds pause before you get a reply. So unless your call is really urgent it’s better to use email.
We only accept telephone calls between 10:00h and 15:00h, Monday through Friday, St Helena time (GMT). Please do not call outside these hours.
Other Options
Message in a bottle
Who knows? It might work! Just make sure there are no plant seeds etc. inside, or it will be destroyed by Customs for biosecurity reasons.
Carrier Pigeon
If you have one that can fly non-stop 1,800Km from Africa (or 2,900Km from South America) by all means give it a go, but be aware that at the editor of this website’s home we have cats…☺
Heliograph
The basic idea of a Heliograph is that you set up a tall tower with an adjustable mirror on the top and reflect the sunlight towards the recipient, signalling using flashes encoded, for example, in Morse Code (more on the Wikipedia). Well, even if you live on the Western edge of Africa and can build a tower around 53Km high{5} - that’s about 100 times the height of the world’s largest current man-made structure - with a really, really big mirror, you still won’t reach us because we live in Jamestown on the North-Western side of the island. In the bottom of a deep valley. Sorry.
Ham Radio
If you are an amateur radio operator, or can find one near to you, you may be able to make contact with one of the island’s amateur radio operators and pass on a message. However, transmission conditions on Shortwave are notoriously irregular so it may take a while to get a link set up for passing on the message, and then it will probably be late at night so they won’t give us the message immediately. Then, when we reply, the same follows for our response to come back to you. On the whole, probably not a lot more effective than by post!
Meet us in person
Editor, John Turner
This site is run from the family home in Jamestown of the editor of this website. This is really not in a position to welcome unexpected callers, so if you want to meet in person please contact us to make an arrangement.
More about this site on our page About This Site.
Credits:
{a} Western Union Company Internal memo, 1876
Footnotes:
{1} Please note that all ‘current’ times on Saint Helena Island Info are calculated from your Device’s clock, so are only as accurate as you make them…{2} Why 48 hours? Well, as explained on our page Communications, the Internet is very expensive here, except between midnight and 6am when it’s free (but with much reduced speed). We take advantage of this to download emails overnight, respond during the next day and then transmit our reply during the following night. Hence an email sent Monday is downloaded Monday night, responded to on Tuesday and the response sent Tuesday night, received Wednesday.{3} We wanted ‘@SaintHelenaIslandInfo’ but that was too many letters for Twitter™!{4} Or St Helena Island, or St. Helena, it doesn’t seem to matter which.{5} According to our, admittedly, rather shaky trigonometry!