There is a health alert with this post… Stand well back as I’m on a rant!
When I was young I imagined grown ups were intelligent and wise. Then I grew up and saw that some were and unfortunately others weren’t. Yesterday I received an email from someone who definitely falls into the latter category and I didn’t take it very well.
I do not do reviews on my blog as it’s not something that I wish to do, nor is it something I’m interested in, so from time to time when I get requests I turn them down. Usually they are very polite, and on occasions are even for somewhat interesting products. Sometimes they address me by name, other times it’s just a ‘Hi’. Neither bother me too much.
What does annoy me is the many times I get an email which is clearly not written by anyone who has ever read my blog, even for 
research purposes. Of course I do not expect every PR company to study each blog they tout, but why bother pretending? Why must they all say, ‘I’ve been reading your blog and think it will be a great fit for our product.’ Why not just ask would we like to review their product? Why must they all act as if they are doing us a massive favour?
So what happened yesterday?
I received an email from a company with the usual line…” I came across your site and thought it would be a great fit for a project that we’re working on for the Holidays!” The email went on “Let me know if you’re interested and I can send more info, including some unique suggestions.”
Look forward to hearing from you!
Best
XYZ
I’ll make no comment on their offer of ‘unique suggestions’ or their rather informal ‘best’ as a sign off, as neither were the reason I was irritated. No the reason I was never, ever going to entertain this request for me to write a post for them on my blog, was because they began the email “Hey Daniel”.
So this person was telling me they read my blog yet they could not figure out that the owner and writer of this blog is the person who replies in the contents and is called ‘Tric’ and not the person in many posts named Daniel, who at the age of 13 passed away from leukemia three years ago.
Really? Is that the very best you could do?
PR companies please get your act together. Respect those you are emailing and understand that it is bloggers who are doing you the favour not vice versa.
So if Ms XYZ you are indeed reading my blog, this post is especially for you.
Best
Tric.
My thoughts on a page. 
Oh no! That must have been beyond upsetting, Tric, especially on the week of his anniversary. x
To be honest I didn’t get too upset, but I did get very annoyed. This is someones job and to do such a miserable job is incredible. I’m not surprised though as they just don’t really rate bloggers.
A spectacular fail. I’m hoping my rather blunt email pointing out the error of her ways will encourage her to do her homework better in the future.
To remain classy all I will say is…..boooooo.
Yes I classily came up with “feckin gobshite”
That’s better than what I said, out loud, as I read …..
Oh dear. So sorry, Tric. 😦 I hope it felt just a little better to get it off your chest.
It actually did Linda. I was going to ignore it, but then thought it was too wrong to ignore so sent an email and to be honest I think it was right to do.
Urgh! And this is why I don’t even read those PR pitches. At least you got to blog about it and in some ways that’s how our words can help us.
I don’t imagine it will be read by anyone who needs to or should read it, but hopefully bloggers will appreciate they are in the driving seat, despite what PRs think.
Ugh, Tric. How awful. I figure a lot of these are spam and just as well ignored.
Unfortunately this was an email from a real person!
That’s even worse. They’re going to have a hard time getting their products sponsored if they can’t learn to make genuine connections.
There are lots of those supposedly reading, commenting and liking your posts but they are just out to promote their products. It’s a good thing Akismet puts it to the spam mailbox.
Yes spam is crazy sometimes but this was an email from a real company!
That is a spectacular fail. Those emails annoy me too Tric but have never been so insensitive in my case. It would be nice if we could circulate these to all their colleagues as an example of how not to PR.
Indeed whatnot todo Tara. Although I’d have hoped it was obvious.
As fails go though it’s a good one.
it is very annoying to say the least, and perhaps you were dealing with a robot, but i suspect it was a person who acts like a robot.
You’ve said it for me!
I’m afraid it was a real person but yes I like your thinking they definitely had robotic tendencies.
Pity they don’t come back and check out these comments. Thoughtless twits.
Indeed. I suspect the only benefit in writing this post was for myself.
Probably a robot…. Or a dork
Or both! 😄
Tell me about it! You should see the asinine requests I get on a daily basis to my breast cancer blog – wildly inappropriate. I usually mark them as spam, but every so often I’ll unleash the full force of my ire in a response to them.
I can only imagine… and how inappropriate they probably are!
It’s good to vent sometimes. I’m glad I wrote this and emailed the person involved, it was too great a mistake not to. Not that I think it makes any difference but it made me feel a lot less cranky.
I wasn’t sure where you were going but that is so horrible. Glad you emailed them back, and to be honest I really hope that they apologise. It only takes a few seconds to look up such a minor detail that in your case could have saved you from the moment I had, where my heart caught in my chest. Sigh. I know you said you were only angry but still hope you’re okay x (I am so angry too.)
Wow that’s horrible. That would really annoy me too. Clearly that person didn’t even take five minutes to look at your blog! Why didn’t they even look at your “about me” page? Ridiculous.
I think that’s the whole point really isn’t it. They email as if they are your best friend out to do you a great favour, when they didn’t even have the courtesy to find out my name. Incredible really.
Oh my goodness, that is completely maddening. I can totally see why you are so upset. What an idiot. Absolutely beggars belief. Ugh.
It was pretty incredible. I half expected her to email me to apologise. Silly me! And even as I type I think, ‘maybe she didn’t read my email yet.’
I understand how upsetting that must have been, and this is not by way of justifying what happened, but an explanation is that sadly it was probably an unpaid PR intern in a consultancy who was given a mailing list and told to send out an email to everyone on it 😦
That’s just awful, Tric! I read in your comments that you said you weren’t upset so much as incredibly irritated by it. I think either reaction would have been perfectly understandable. My goodness, what an incredibly crass email for someone to send. 😦
Totally inexcusable! I would have really blasted them and published their name and company. Shame on them!