Some Emailers Simply Don’t Care…

July 14, 2009 by Judith

I thought I would share with you an email I received from a site visitor in regard to my Email Etiquette Quiz:

Site Visitor: “In your Netiquette Quiz; QUESTION: 9 in regard to how quickly I should respond to emails you say the correct answer was A: ‘As soon as I can; no longer than 24-48 hours — to not reply promptly gives the perception you don’t care.’

This is the wrong answer!! The proper answer is c. ‘I don’t have to reply’ at all. I WANT the person to perceive that I don’t care! (Name Withheld)”

Wow! I can’t imagine he feels that way about every email, but none-the-less he felt the need to send me the above comment trying to correct me.

Email Etiquette is a set of guidelines for folks to use so that they are perceived as someone who is a pleasure to communicate with. And, one can ignore every single bit of information on the topic that I have here on this site if they so choose.

Responding promptly to emails is simply the courteous thing to do. The answer stands as this person’s response is the exception not the rule. And if one doesn’t care about any emails they receive from anyone as this visitor seems to claim, at least they should have the intestinal fortitude to email the person(s) in question and tell them how they feel instead of hiding behind their screen or expecting me to change the right answer to something that caters to their lack of character and courtesy.

If he doesn’t care or doesn’t want people he emails to care, it seems to me he is pretty good at getting that across.

Share (You know you want to...)

Comments

2 Responses to “Some Emailers Simply Don’t Care…”

Eugene Earle on August 18th, 2009 11:14 am

Your comments about the need for prompt response apply to legitimate, wanted email.

But, of course, replying to spam, hoaxes, frauds, phishing and other unwanted email is not a good idea, and may even constitute a security risk. These days, just opening spam can notify the senders that your address is live. In this context, the comments of your visitor above make some sense, since the question in the quiz doesn’t distinguish between wanted and unwanted email.

Since the great majority of email traffic these days is spam and other illegitimate email, maybe it would be a good idea to make this distinction in the quiz, even perhaps adding an additional question to deal with proper response to the “junk.”
Judith on August 18th, 2009 1:23 pm

Hey, Eugene:

Concerns over whether to reply or not surely are about e-mails that are not spam. No one expects you to reply promptly to spam.

With spam you have two choices; delete and/or report to abuse@ their ISP or through a site like SpamCop.net

HTH!