There are some real problems and perhaps some lessons for other parts of the government. Congressional offices are vast mail machines. A distressingly large percentage of the staff spends its time sorting and answering mail. If you write your own representative, you will get an answer. If you write to the wrong representative, your mail will be forwarded by a staff member all too happy to dump work onto someone else.
Most congressional offices are now Internet-literate.
But few are organized to handle e-mail. Offices frequently have to print e-mail and then send a response via the snail mail stream, but that may be the best a representative can do at the moment. E-mail and Congress just don't mix very well, and it may be some time before this changes. This is why many congressional World Wide Web pages tell e-mailers to include a street mail address to receive a response. On the Net, home addresses are unimportant.