Dealing with Unwanted Emails: A Personal Experience and Advice from a Dog Lover

[randis]

This is a little long of a post so please bare with me, I really need your advice/support

Ok, I don't know how many of you use Gmail, but if you do, beware that anytime you email someone, their email address gets saved in you contact list. If you are like me, when you send out your newsletters you select everyone on your contact list, because well if they are there then you put them there right? Wrong. and, I have currently been joining meetup groups on meetup.com. Great website you should check it out because there is a lot of potential for meeting people.

So anyway, I am a huge dog lover and joined a few dog groups of specific breeds even tho I dont have that particular dog, mainly because I just want to meet people that share the same dog love that I have. Well, one lady from the group emailed me to welcome me to the group and asked about my pug. I told her that I did not have a pug at this time but that I was into learning more about them because I rescue and adopt dogs all the time. Well I made the first mistake of emailing her back because her contact info got added to my emailing list. The past couple of days I have been emailing my list asking for help with my goal this month (which I met!!!) and I get this email today:

Hi Randi:
I am requesting that you remove me and the rest of the Pug Meetup Vegas members from your Pampered Chef mailing list. I did not join the meetup to be solicited by a person who doesn't even have a pug. The meetup is not designed for you to use it as a contact list to further your business, it is for pug lovers and owners to get together and play with the pugs. Thank you for listening to my request.

Stephanie

So I was a little peeved at the "attitude" that is reflected here. So in my nicest email voice this is what I emailed back:

Dear Stephanie,

I appreciate your concerns. Please understand that I am not intentionally adding people to my mailing group, I am still learning the ins and outs of gmail and anytime I receive or reply to emails that email address is added to my contact list. I am just learning this as of recently. Since we have emailed back in forth a couple of times you were unintentionally added. The group is not added in a whole just email addresses that I have had in my email box. I do appologize for this confusion I am working on correcting it.

I understand your concerns on my joining the group although I do not own a pug, but my intentions were strictly harmless as I am a HUGE dog lover and supporter and although I do not have a specific breed of dog, I am a rescuer and a donater to all organizations that are animal related. I was only hoping to meet people in this organization in hopes of being there in case an animal needed fostering or care. Yes, I also wanted to share that my business does do fundraisers, in hopes to help raise monies for the Pug Rescue as well as other dog rescue organizations, but this was not the main reason I wanted to join the group. I wanted to meet other dog lovers that share the same interests as I. And I do not make money on fundraising, everything is donated to the organization. It is my ultimate goal to own my own rescue and rehabilitation center for all animals, mainly dogs to help them in their search for homes and families. And in my quest to reaching my goal, I am currently studying types of dogs and breeds to be able to work with them by knowing their traits and behaviors.

Again, I do apologize to you for you being added to my mailing list by accident, I will be sure to remove your email address, as I am pretty sure you are the only one in the group that is getting these emails. Please let me know if others are as well, I will gladly take them off.

Please accept my sincere apologies for my lack of knowledge of my email system, I will try to be more aware of what is going on in the future.

Thank you

Do you think that I handled this well? I am just very taken back by the rude email!

 

[pamperedlinda]

I think your response was fine.

Not sure about gmail, but other email programs have an option that will add all addresses from emails that your receive automatically to your addressbook. You might want to look and see if you have that option and if so you probably want to turn it off.

 

[abrahamlaur]

Randis, I think you handled it well. You sound sincere in your apology to her and sound like you really didnt know it was going to her. I think that is all you can do. Hopefully she finds you as sincere as I did and still "allows" you to be in that group.

On a side note, I HATE Gmail! My director told me to get it because you can upload your contact information into Outlook ... Well 1. I still cant upload my addresses for some reason, 2. I hate how it saves "conversations" as opposed to individual emails and 3. I hate how you cant have a little pop up for inserting email addresses once you already have the email written. Maybe I'm just too familiar with Yahoo or something and that is my "comfort zone" in regards to Email. Thanks for the heads up though .. I"ll be careful! Good Luck!

 

[randis]

Yea my hubby is a computer guy, oddly enough, I have ask him about it, but I don't think he understands what I am talking about. I will make sure I make him sit down with me after this email and fix it for me....sometimes I swear I would be lost without his tech skills!! haha

 

[randis]

Randis, I think you handled it well. You sound sincere in your apology to her and sound like you really didnt know it was going to her. I think that is all you can do. Hopefully she finds you as sincere as I did and still "allows" you to be in that group.

On a side note, I HATE Gmail! My director told me to get it because you can upload your contact information into Outlook ... Well 1. I still cant upload my addresses for some reason, 2. I hate how it saves "conversations" as opposed to individual emails and 3. I hate how you cant have a little pop up for inserting email addresses once you already have the email written. Maybe I'm just too familiar with Yahoo or something and that is my "comfort zone" in regards to Email. Thanks for the heads up though .. I"ll be careful! Good Luck!

I think that I am going to see if my hubby can put me on outlook because he does it, and I need a better way to "file" my emails then what gmail provides.

thank you for reviewing the email, they did remove me from the group and not to offend any other pug owners but I don't know if I want to be a part of it anymore. When I had originally contacted the Pug Rescue out here too for fundraising they were kinda snotty to me too. So I think its a bless and release situation....

 

[abrahamlaur]

Sorry to hear that Randis, I guess it is for the best. good luck finding another group to be apart of to learn about the pugs and further your quests for your own rescue shelter.

 

[PamperedChefDebi]

I stopped using gmail because I was getting constant nondeliverable errors and could not find any solution even after contacting them.

Regarding saving the contacts, you need to check the options, as Linda mentioned, this can be unselected.

Also, the instructions to get gmail set up with Outlook, to include copying the contact, is also linked under options. Just look for info about POP mail.

Good luck! Personally, I finally just paid for a yahoo account I could set up with Outlook.

 

[AJPratt]

I think you were very honest and your apology sincere, and if they can't accept that then, maybe it isn't the group for you.

Hey, everyone makes a mistake! And, if you get the chance to talk to her again you can always, "thank her" for bringing that issue with your email to your attention.

 

[DebbieJ]

I don't think her initial email was rude at all.

 

[dwyerkim]

I think you handled it appropriately, it was obviously a mistake. This is probably just one of those things you need to let go. People are weird sometimes.

 

[GeorgiaPeach]

I don't think her initial email was rude at all.

I agree. Even though it happened innocently, if you put yourself in her place...it looks like you are trolling for business. I'd probably respond the same way she did.

Your response was good. It explained why you were on their site even though you don't have a pug. If she doesn't accept your apology, you've done what you can.

 

[hoosierchef]

Do you think that I handled this well? I am just very taken back by the rude email!

I think your response was very good, however I didn't think her email was rude either. It's difficult to "read" others intentions in emails.

 

[pcchris]

Wow - I have gmail and I don't have any problems with it, but thanks for the heads up! I'll make sure that I check who I'm sending stuff to.

 

[pcchris]

BTW - I thought your reply to her was very professional! Nice choice of words!

 

[ChefLisa]

Since she thought you were using the meetup to solicite business, I thought her response was exactly what most of us would have sent. I don't think it was harsh, just to the point. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unethical people who do use these sites to gather emails to solite business. She had no way of knowing your email was just a mistake.

I think your response was very heartfelt, honest and professional.

Lisa

 

[AlowayFamily]

Good luck! Personally, I finally just paid for a yahoo account I could set up with Outlook.

Do you mind if I ask how you set up the yahoo account with Outlook? Was that a 1 time cost, or a monthly fee?

I would love to use Outlook, rather than yahoo.

Thanks!