Monday earlier this week I get an email that was sent from someone asking to be removed from a list. A list that I happened to be on despite not opting in to it(which a topic for yet another post). So far you can see the problem, this person is asking to be removed from the list so why am I seeing a message that should be sent to and seen by only the original sender of the email? And apparently it was not just me getting that remove request email but everyone else on the entire mailing list. This touched off a mini-firestorm of multiple people asking to be removed from this list and ALL of their requests being sent to me and everyone else. Here are a few, copied verbatim, addresses withheld:

Person 1: Please remove me from your list as well. Thank you.

Person 2: Please stop hitting reply all to get yourself removed from the list. Cuz, if I see one more request, I’m gonna ask to be removed too !

Person 3: Thank u I thought I had to say something!

Person 4: I am getting the same emails as you I am not the one sending out the emails sorry for the confusion.

Person 5: I don’t understand what is happening here.

PLEASE STOP SENDING THESE MESSSAGES TO ME! I AM NOT PROMO(WHATEVER/WHOMEVER) AND I DO NOT WANT RESPONSES ROUTED TO ME!!!

FOR THE LAST TIME REMOVE MY NAME /ADDRESS AND/OR ANY OTHER CONTACT INFORMATION FROM THIS LIST!

THANK YOU ALL

Person 6: I don’t know how I’m getting these e-mails, because I’m not done with the promotion team with this company, but please send it to [redacted] and not myself. Thanks!

Person 7: REMOVE ME!!!!!!

And this is how it continued. Not a pretty scene for anyone involved. Now if the company maintaining this list saw fit to use a list management sytem all of this would have been avoided. I was going to add my own remove request but I figured why add to the misery when I can just add the company to my blocked list.

Technorati Tags: email, email marketing, spam

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