How hard is it to send an e-mail?

A big pet peeve of mine is when internet stores cancel orders without sending you an e-mail. There are few things more frustrating than expecting to get something in the mail, wondering why it still hasn't come, and then checking the order status and seeing "Cancelled." It shouldn't be difficult to trigger a "we're sorry, but your order has be cancelled" message, should it?

That happened to me a few days ago, for the Seagate portable drive I bought from their online store on closeout. It was a fantastic price...obviously too fantastic or too much demand. After seeing that it was cancelled, I thought, "oh, well." That is, until I got an e-mail from Seagate with the subject "Seagate Followup Offer" that began with, "As a follow up to the original communication regarding your canceled order at Seagate.com and as a valued customer, we are offering you the following special program on one of our most attractive new products."

While it's nice they were willing to send what amounts to a 20% discount on a product I'm not interested in, I'm somwhat annoyed that they said that they told me my earlier order was cancelled. I even went through my spam folder to see if it had gotten tagged as spam. Nothing from Seagate.

It just seems like good customer service to drop a line, even in the case of a price mistake or out of stock situation. At least I wouldn't have to wonder whether the order was coming or not.