Delivering the Email Smackdown

I don't particularly enjoy being an asshole, which isn't to say that I'm not really, really good at it, I just don't like being one. But there are times when you kind of have to stand by the line in the sand and prepare to be an asshole when that lines gets crossed, especially by people that are supposed to be servicing you.

After having made multiple request for contact by email only and then still getting monthly phone calls to my house and to my cell, I had had enough and pretty much ripped this person a fresh one, politely but ripped nonetheless.

She's a contact person through my insurance company to help us smoothly transition into a new house, when we're ready to buy which we definitely are not. I understand she needs to keep her i's dotted and her t's crossed and that isn't my problem. My problem is that I asked her on at least three occasions to refrain from calling me and to use email as a contact.

The reason for this is because her voice drives me up the friggin' wall. Do you remember the school secretary in Ferris Bueller? She has the same intonation and comes off as incredibly condescending even though I'm convinced she doesn't intend to. But speaking with her is just an aggravation and I refuse to answer her calls.

And so, after getting a call on my cell and then coming home to find another message on my home phone, I fired off a pretty aggravated email to her demanding that she not call again. I didn't curse, I didn't attack her directly but I did make it very clear that it was absolutely unacceptable for her to continue contacting me in a manner I have specifically requested she not use.

She wrote back this morning to notify me that she was inactivating our account, as per my request, but there was no apology for the unwanted contacts. I think, when the time comes for us to move, I'll be requesting another account manager to handle the transaction for us. Life is too short to have to deal with people who are the human equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. And I've got too much aggravation in the rest of my life to put up with her.

Relentless Pursuit of the Sale

This is an exercise is how many annoying emails a company can send out after not even having completed the one single order I did make with them back on Valentine's Day.

I'm writing about, of course, ProFlowers. I got a bouquet of flowers for my wife for Valentine's Day, it came with a vase and chocolates but they didn't ship the chocolates with the flowers. And the chocolates were supposed to arrive last week, they did not.

And in the interim, I've gotten at least three emails from ProFlowers exhorting me to buy, buy, BUY more freakin' flowers. Or take their customer satisfaction survey (no, they do not allow negative scores).

ProFlowers does a good job on follow ups, they just did a pretty pisspoor job on the original order, which they've yet to complete now, nearly two weeks later.

Oh yeah, add on to this that ProFlowers sold my marketing information, without my consent, to one of their "trusted" partners.

Yeah, I'll be making sure that ProFlowers never sees another penny of mine.