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Today I received an unsolicited email from a company offering me a website re-design service.  Like you, I receive countless spam or unsolicited email messages each day, many of which don’t even originate from bone-fide business email addresses, which just makes me laugh my socks off! Honestly, who is going to do any sort of business with anyone operating from a Hotmail or Gmail email account? Certainly not I, perhaps im fussy but I doubt it.

In the main, I just tend to ignore those emails, adding them immediately to my junk mail folder, which as you can imagine, is crammed full of spammers peddling wares I will never have any interest in.  What a motley bunch they are too, anything from empty promises to get me on page 1 of Google, so-called link building organisations, weight loss miracles (which I could probably do with but don’t tell them that!), pharmaceutical goods and some marketers even requesting my attendance to exhibitions in some random overseas location. Whilst I could use a holiday, an expo not related to my industry is not my idea of fun or relaxation – im more the sightseeing and sunshine type.

Today’s email did come from a company with a fairly genuine sounding email address saying my details had been ‘recommended by their friend’ so out of courtesy, I replied, half wondering if I knew this friend and that if I did, I should perhaps say, thanks but no thanks.  Given I am really busy at the moment; I thought this was a nice thing to do!  How wrong was I? 

I replied explaining that if I wanted my website re-designed I would research an organisation fully and take up personal recommendations as a must, citing I would not use any company who had contacted me out of the blue; effectively spamming me.  I then proceeded to ask to be removed from their marketing list. 

Quite honestly, at this point, I am in no need of a website re-design and if I did, I would go about conducting my own thorough research and of course, take up personal recommendations from my trusted Twitter followers and #VASG colleagues and even then, I’d probably um and err about it for six months like I have been doing with a new logo designer!

Shock - you’re kidding me was my initial reaction when I was accused by the original email sender as being rude in my reply.  But then on reflection, I thought to myself: is it really rude to take 5 minutes out of my schedule to reply, explaining this isn’t the way I would consider doing business, declining their services and asking to be removed from a mailing list?

Ok, so the reply was short and it was to the point but it was personally addressed to the sender and laid down my procurement methods with clarity, declined their services and politely asked to be removed from a mailing list. Whilst my friends, family and business colleagues might say im a lot of things, im 100% certain rude or nasty are not amongst them.

Whilst there is never going to be the perfect way to decline a service, surely to accuse someone of being rude is somewhat inappropriate given they are responding personally, when a) I could have ignored them completely and b) I could have replied with the word SPAM written in big, fat red letters!

I was left somewhat puzzled by their response but one thing is for certain, I won’t be losing any sleep over it, not now I’ve had my little rant here, anyhow and got it off my chest.

So, perhaps I am wrong in thinking any unsolicited email is effectively spam when sent to ‘undisclosed recipients’ who haven’t asked to be contacted? Really, am I wrong?

One thing is for sure, I won’t take the time to reply and exercise courtesy in the future. Lesson learnt… don’t bother to entertain unsolicited emails, just add them straight to the junk mail folder.

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