…send an email about property

Email from MyHome.ie this morning…

Subject line: “Record Number of Homes Repossessed: Could you be next?”

This also-ran property website sure knows how to reassure its would-be property buyers.

…do a French letter

One of my neighbours is a big francophile, and he tells the following bizarre story that happened to him the other day. He subscribes to an email newsletter from the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Dublin and here is the  sequence of emails by time.

2.48pm

He gets an email from the embassy about a competition to win two tickets for a special screening of “Coco Before Chanel”, Audrey Tatou’s latest film. And the director, director Anne Fontaine, will be doing a Q&A session afterwards.

To enter the competition, reply to this e-mail by Tuesday 21 July and answer the following 2 questions…

2.58pm

He’s a big fan of Tatou (star of the big hit “Amélie”), and the two answers are easy. So easy that he fires them off to the reply address (cinema@ambafrance.ie) in less than 60 seconds.

3.01pm

A few minutes later, he gets a reply:

Thank you for entering this competition.
Unfortunately the free tickets have already been assigned.

If you wish to be kept up to date with our cultural information subscribe to our newsletter by sending an e-mail to scac@ambafrance.ie or visit our website www.ambafrance.ie

3.02pm

He thinks this is a bit rude. So a minute later he replies:

What’s the point in entering a competition less than 60 seconds after receiving your email, only to be told the tickets have all been assigned anyway? Please unsubscribe me.

3.03pm

A message arrives:

Thank you for entering this competition.
Unfortunately the free tickets have already been assigned.

If you wish to be kept up to date with our cultural information subscribe to our newsletter by sending an e-mail to scac@ambafrance.ie or visit our website www.ambafrance.ie

It seems it’s an automatic response from that address. So he’s getting nowhere. Maybe it has been set up only to understand email subscribe/unsubscribe instructions. What happens if you put “unsubscribe” in the subject line?

3.05pm

To: cinema@ambafrance.ie
Subject: unsubscribe

3.14pm

The same “Thank you for entering…” message arrives again.

Then, shortly afterwards another. This time it’s from Elisabetta Sabbatini, a Communications Assistant in the embassy:

I understand your concern but unfortunately we had only 8 free tickets to give away and there have been 32 people replying with the correct answer before you.

I hope you understand.

I will unsubscribe your e-mail address from our database.

Best regards,

3.18pm

So he replies:

Thank you Ms Sabbatini for taking the time to reply – I thought I was emailing to an automatic responder.

I am sorry, but this seems a very strange way to run a “competition” via email. As competitions go, it is not very fair or equal. These other people must have received the emails from you quite a bit before me, as I replied instantly.

First of all you explained the overall rules very badly. You shouldn’t have specified that you were collecting entries by a particular closing date (next Tuesday). Instead you should have simply said that the first eight correct entries by email would count.

Thirdly, this means that people at the end of your subscriber list don’t really stand a chance in your competitions because the people at the start of it have a big advantage. It would have been fairer to draw eight names out of a hat by a closing date instead of making it first past the post.

3.24pm

The final measured response arrives from the embassy:

Thank you for entering this competition.
Unfortunately the free tickets have already been assigned.

If you wish to be kept up to date with our cultural information subscribe to our newsletter by sending an e-mail to scac@ambafrance.ie or visit our website www.ambafrance.ie

At this point he gave up.