I was always brought up to be polite and it was regularly drummed into me as a child that if someone writes to you, you must write back. Especially if their communication included a postal order, book token or whatever for your birthday or Christmas.
Actually, in my case, Christmas Day and my Birthday were but three days apart, so quite often I would receive, to my disappointment, one present to cover both form various godparents, grandparents and the like. But that’s another story.
Anyway, very few people write thank-you letters these days. However, the volume of communications full of various goodies (or at least promising them) we receive nowadays has actually increased dramatically.
But it’s still good to send a thank you letter in the right circumstances, just as it is to receive one. And with spam emails promising so much, it suddenly struck me. What if those spam emails really did deliver what they promised, and I was moved to write a thank you letter tor two?
They might go something like this:
“Dear xxxx,
Thank you for offering to give me 20% of the £50 million fortune belonging to the unfortunate late Mr Kadogo. How amazing that of all the people you could have picked to help you make that transaction you chose me!
Well, I did as you said. I sent you all the bank details, and I paid the £10,000 processing fee. Now I’m just waiting for my share of the fortune to come through. I do hope it’s soon, as there seems to be some error with my bank account – they’ve just told me that it’s massively overdrawn. These banks are always getting it wrong – just as soon as I receive my share of Mr Kadogo’s fortune I’m moving to a different bank!
Yours etc…”
Or perhaps:
“Dear xxxx,
Thank you for your email offering to let me ‘Watch it grow an inch every day.’ I took your advice, bought your pills, and….well, you’re not wrong.
Sorry for the belated reply. I appreciate it’s been a long time now. However, as you can imagine, I had my hands full for the first couple of months. Then, I was about to write to you, when I had a nasty accident, tripping over myself. So that took a few days to get over.
Unfortunately, I can now no longer find trousers to fit me. It’s also getting hard to reach the keyboard on the computer. So this may be my last communication.
So long! (As I often find myself saying nowadays…)”
If you’re looking for some rather more serious letter writing, please take a look at my direct response copy page.
2 Comments
Hi Peter nice letters you send back. I lately get spammed by hundreds of emails all same bad designed offering in most primitive way web development. Best way to answer I found out was this. Typing in 18 points and between ‘It appears . . . legal action in bold letters. If you like you can post it, might be of help many spams should be answered by what we call in German ‘hinterfotzig’.
Dear Kid,
I think you have sneaked into your parents computer dreaming of setting up business to surprise dad and mom how clever you are. Nice, but for legal meaning I have to write you following.
It appears that you are illegally using resources that provide business addresses for unsolicited advertising that are agains WWW rules. It’s a crime and unprofessional, you’re wasting your resources and ours! We have therefore blocked you and ask you to delete all data relating to us immediately. If you or your parents do not comply with this request, we will reserve the right to take further legal action.
Something personal as you’re probably a kid:
See, the childish amateurish appearance of you email let me think that you’re a youth dreaming of big business‚ cause you’ve heard how easy it is on internet to make a million, right? Which would be nice if true. But even if so, starting it in such stupid manner means just a nuisance or laugh about it before deleting your mail. See, only dumb kids do think, that just sending some hundred thousands spam will find another dumb one to cash money from? No? But you’re one of them!
Listen little one, to start any internet business you first need to have your own website and an email server (not just a shitty provider like free gmail or others) to convince people that you’re able to do the job and present yourself in best professional manner. This is your showcase and the only way to get known.
And even more important, don’t be so naiv, thinking that someone wants having shown his next secret business campaign to 250+ other idiots. Do you even know one of them? No, but you’re dumb enough to think the more people one get it the more impression it makes, right? Who had told you that you by yourself would have never came up with this? The company that ripped you off for such stupidity? So please be more clever than they. Only if you present yourself right, people want YOU and not an unknown number they don’t know who and where they are.
By the way where are you living, guess your time zone is IST, right? That’s because in developing countries like India are many poor, uneducated people, so it’s easy to just ripp off the poorest all underdogs best. You money might have been better invested in a stand to sell Dal soup, perhaps you could convince your mom to help you out during lunch times when people leave office and you sell a lot? Wouldn’t you want be one of them . . . even it would need to start low and cleaning rest rooms?
Ok, guess you’d never heard of data protection, cause if so you wouldn’t have done such stupid thing. But there are many countries where you have to pay a hefty fine for every single unsolicited mail sent. Are you aware that the same email you’d sent to me are going to million more people, blocking traffic you business would depend on? Shame on them you’d say but you are one of those assholes (sorry, I mean the adults).
I know at you age one have to learn a lot. So best would be you’re going back to classes and learn something better than dreaming of big money by sending unsolicited emails!
Please tell your daddy or mom about this so they can help you getting out of it. Otherwise they are legally responsible when they receive a registered mail from a lawyer who’s specialized in such unsolicited cases like yours and just awaits them. Know they have little programs called robots to search for letters like you send. Alone his letter, called-cease-and desist order, sure will minimum cost your parents more than all your pocket money for some years.
I myself find it poor as lawyer to venture into such low business, but otherwise the entire email would no longer work. So seriously if I’ll get another one from you I’ll do the same.
So don’t cry, when young it’s completely right to do stupid things as long as you learn from it and never ever repeat it. You want be a good boy or girl, right? So don’t be a nitwit.
Thanks for the reply Wolfgang. Wow, your method should certainly stop them – and that’s just for the lousy web development guys. What about the ones who are actually looking to steal from you?!