Company has Odd HR Approach

To maintain anonymity, names in this post have been changed.

I work for a large organization of over 1,200 employees, with about 200 of us based at the corporate headquarters. Recently, my department was instructed to direct all handbook and policy inquiries to an HR representative named CONI. For over a year, we were told to contact "her," even though the email address, CONI@companyname.com, didn't follow our standard first.last@companyname.com format.

Management eventually revealed that CONI is not an actual person, but rather a department of two or three people whose location and identities remain unknown. Getting a response typically takes two to three weeks, if one arrives at all. When we don't hear back, we have to escalate the issue to management, who then "push" the request back to CONI. Is this considered a standard or appropriate professional practice? Furthermore, staff have begun to speculate that "CONI" might actually be a pseudonym for the CEO and COO.