Tuesday 26 February 2008

You have mail

This morning, among the plethora of e-mails offering to ‘enlarge my tool’, ‘make her bEg (sic)’ and something I didn’t quite understand, but seemed to make fascinating use of the word ‘pounding’, was an e-mail from my ever popular estate agent, who, continuing my theme of naming and shaming, happen to be Lauristons of Balham.

This time they wanted to sell me a flat, which was quite nice of them really, especially seeing as they haven’t deemed it necessary to fix the problems with the current one since we moved in, so we’re pretty much prime candidates for wanting to move out. Anyway I wasn’t interested and deleted it. Then they sent me another one about an hour later. For the same flat. Which I deleted, literally minutes before receiving another e-mail. For the same flat. A couple more e-mails, and a newly found hatred for Chiswick, later and I decided it was time to reply.....

Dear John,

I’m afraid I have no interest in this, or any properties you have, or will have, on your books. I quickly established this the first time you sent me this e-mail. The second e-mail confirmed this, the third I considered it a glitch in the system, however the fourth time it arrived I realised that there was something else going on. As I’ve not come across your name before, I can only presume that you must be new to the team, and thus in an effort to blend in I’m guessing that you’re attempting to join the rest of the organisation in their continuing effort to turn incompetence into a competitive sport. While I applaud your efforts on this front, and the continuing dedication of those around you, I feel I should warn you that, while you clearly lack the basic understanding required when sending e-mail, and are as such are thoroughly deserving of your position, I’m afraid your colleges have set such a staggering precedent when it comes to incompetence, failure, and fundamental idiocy, that I fear your current efforts are falling far short of the standards we have come to expect of your organisation. In the spirit of good will I can only make some suggestions that, with luck, should be of use in the future.

Firstly, at no point should you instigate communication. Communication should only be provided from yourself once contacted by the third party. After this initial contact please wait for approximately 3 more attempts to contact you to pass, ignoring all e-mails and voicemails in between times, before grudgingly replying a claiming total ignorance of the entire process.
Secondly, spelling. My surname, while relatively short, is often misspelt. On reviewing each of your e-mails you missed this relatively simple means of error on all occasions. In future I would recommend addressing this, and also advise you make further assumptions over the relationships of the individuals you contact, summarily marrying and divorcing them as you see fit.

Finally content. Your e-mail not only included a link to further information, but also a phone number one which, presumably, I might be able to contact you. All of this could actually be of practical use to the recipient, and therefore should at no point be included, accepting of course, if you were to include incorrect, or out dated information. For further examples of this please see your website, which traditionally only features unavailable property, blurred images, and absolutely no further details at all.

Simply adherence to these, and similar such rules should rapidly ensure you acceptance into the team.

In no way do I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Regards......

Aint it fun?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well written article.