A German court, ruling on the German Telemedia Act, which says that companies must provide a way to ensure fast electronic communications with them, has ordered Google to stop ignoring customer emails and start offering a way to communicate with the company.

As it stood, Google users who emailed the address “support-de@google.com” received an automatic reply notifying the e-mailer that Google will neither read nor reply due to the large number of requests sent to the address.

The case was brought by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV).

The court agreed with the VZBV and ruled that an automatically generated email does not meet the requirements of the law.

Although it did not rule that every email the company receives should be looked at and replied to by a Google employee, it did provide the possibility for users to contact it via email.

If Google does not change its conduct, it could be fined up to €250,000 (about US$323,000), the court said.