How NOT to Ask for Help
Posted in Here’s a lesson on how not to communicate online.
As many who use the internet these days know, ocassionally email is not received by its intended recipient. It might be blocked by spam filters, could be missent, shunted off to bulk mail folders. For a while some, but not all, mail from my server was being rejected by AOL but not bouncing back.
Also as many who I correspond with probably suspect, I heavily filter mail for spam. I get several hundred such messages every day. Spam now comprises about 95% of the email I receive on my OAImages account. I use Qurb to filter mail and also do some other filtering of my own, sending spam to its own folder for casual review before deletion. Among many other filters, mail orginating from an address not in my Outlook address book gets sent to this folder, as does all mail written entirely in capital letters.
With all that in mind, I found this email waiting for me Monday night:
I SENT YOU CASH AND HAVE REPEATEDLY SOUGHT TO EMAIL YOU ABOUT MEMBERSHIP. YOU HAVE TOTALLY IGNORED ME. WHY?
EITHER SEND ME MY MONEY BACK OR SHOW SOME COURTESY. SOME SCOUTER!!
That was the entire message. He never signed it. Remember this is the first email I saw from him. Without the character attack at the end, this would certainly appear like spam… all that would be missing is a link to some Nigerian website where I could show that courtesy by supplying my banking information!
However I recognized the email address since I did receive his cash and had sent a password for my site to him six days prior. Did he never receive it? Possibly. I note from his userid and the title he gave when he subscribed, this person is apparently a member of the clergy.
I only slightly regret I fired back with both barrels at him: no ad hominems, but short and to the point. I also told him I’d send him a check back and cancel the id, once he confirms the mailing address. Life is short. I’ve believe in limiting my frustration as much as possible.
How would you have replied to his demands and attack on your intergrity?
By the way, since a user picks his own id there was an alternate way for him to get a password to the price guide, assuming I had activated the userid. Follow the link to request a new password that’s on the bottom of most pages on the site. There are even other ways to contact me, if it appears to you I’m ignoring email. Nevermind the possibility that I could have also been out of town or offline for a period of time.
As the communications supervisor and training instructor for our Police Communications section, I always emphasize:
“The greatest problem with Communications is the delusion that it has been achieved”