Evidence that junk email can be useful for something, if only for a blog post rich in triviality and pointlessness

This is my junk email, all arrived today.  I daren't click on the links, as I know they will all connect me to a Medieval Plague of Viruses, but I feel I have to reply, so I will do so here.

Message 1. Halifax Online Service Security Update

Well, thanks for that, Halifax Bank, or Probably-Not-Halifax-Bank, but I'd get advice on your use of capital letters for the beginnings of all your words.   It arouses instant suspicion, in a serial-killer-suspicion kind of way.  Think: 'I Am Coming To Get You With a Big Knife'.

Message 2. Nothing beats a British fry-up!

Well, there you're wrong.  Not getting junk mail with stupid messages beats a British fry-up.  And cut out the exclamation marks.  I spend the whole day, every day, telling 14 year olds not to over-use the exclamation mark, then I get home at the end of the day, and there's you, bombarding me with insincere emotion so that I click on your dodgy link.  Bog off.


Message 3. Handbag giveaway every day in October.

No thanks.  This would make me the proud owner of 30 handbags, and however given-away they were, that's still 29 more than I need.  Some of us can't fill up our wardrobes with spare handbags, you know.  Some of us fill our wardrobes with clothes as wide as a 6-man tent which need hangers that would stretch across the Atlantic and stop you from closing the door properly in the first place.


Message 4. You have a new secure message from Egg

Secure?  Then why is it in my junk mail?  Secure + Egg?  Sorry, sunshine.  Secure + Padlocked-Steel-Enforced-Safe, yes.  Secure + Vault-Guarded-by-Rottweilers, yes.  Secure + Egg?  You must be yolking.


Message 5. Halifax Account Status Notification

Now, just because you've missed the word 'online' off the subject line this time doesn't mean I'm fooled.  This looks suspiciously like the previous message, received only 2 hours before.  When a murderer says, 'Come here and let me dismember you', just because he repeats it a second time as 'Come and let me dismember you' this isn't going to make the victim go, 'Oh, SORRY, I thought you were being threatening just then!  My apologies!  Do approach with the kitchen knife ANY TIME.'


Message 6. Halifax Online Banking: Account Status Notification

Nice try, honeybun.  Nice try.  But not subtle.  


Message 7. Viagra 100mg x 60 pills £125, Free Pills and Reorder Discount, Top Selling 100% quality, Satisfaction Guaranteed

Have you been taking lessons from the Probably-Not-Halifax in how to make people suspicious with capital letters?  Because, if so, it's working fine.  Please go away and sell your Viagra to people with the relevant equipment.   And sort out your comma splices.  If I were a man, I wouldn't buy Viagra from a comma-splicer who over-uses capital letters even if I was as limp as a month-old lettuce.



Fran wondered whether she was over-reacting to yet another junk email from the  Probably-Not-Halifax

Comments

  1. The Merry20/10/11 18:58

    Spent a brief but unfortunately memorable span of time documenting procedures for a bank. Alas, they do tend to capitalize the start of each word, Whether It Needs It Or Not. Because doing that makes the message Sound More Important. And it is Very Important That Bankers Sound Important.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Merry20/10/11 18:58

    At least, it is important to bankers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Charlotte20/10/11 23:00

    It Is Also Equally Important That You Punctuate-With EVERY KEY - So that the reader recognise's; that you are literate!

    Being Literate! = Professional, therfore, in the scheme of things, the reader will assume the: E-mail, is virus free!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Charlotte20/10/11 23:01

    P.S:- I is a literacy teecha!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Martin20/10/11 23:58

    Now, if someone could offer the financial equivalent of viagra, for enhancing an underperforming savings account...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Steve21/10/11 00:12

    So it's just me that gets all the "grow it big" emails, is it?

    Hello?

    Hello?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Frances21/10/11 01:01

    On a similar theme......I work in a Bank ( just thought I would give it a capital there) and the other day a not particularly elderly lady showed me a long letter purporting to be from a solicitor in some foreign clime, badly spelled etc, and to cut a long story short, it was telling her that a long lost relative had died, leaving her a lot of money ( it went into great detail about said relly!) and please would she phone this number etc etc.....she obviously had not really spotted it as a scam though. There must be many like her who reply to these emails and letters, or they ( the bad people) wouldn't bother would they?

    ReplyDelete
  8. ted and bunny21/10/11 01:24

    spare a thought for sad people like me...I'm on 1st name terms with Halifax, they're the only emails I get (sob)...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Frances Garrood21/10/11 01:46

    Lovely post, and I'm so glad someone else is as anti-exclamation mark as I am! (That WAS an exclamation, by the way.) I cannot stand the overuse of exclamation marks, especially when used in duplicate or even triplicate. As someone once said, they are the equivalent of laughing at your own joke.

    Phew. I feel much better now. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  10. hausfrau21/10/11 01:49

    I promise not to upset Fran by using too many exclamation marks in my next post - it's too late for the one I've just done.. sorry Miss!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Carolina21/10/11 02:41

    I bow my head in shame. I overuse exclamation marks and often start every word in the title of a post with a capital. And I start lots of sentences with I. But at least I don't send junk email. Phew!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Alan Burnett21/10/11 02:50

    Another classic Fran-fest!!

    ReplyDelete
  13. broken biro21/10/11 03:45

    I am a Nigerian Prince, and I can Rid YOUR Inbox of this Pestilence and, Strife. Simples send me 25 Thousands of British Sterlin Pounds (which is being returned later by International Money Odour by my offsure Bankers).....

    ReplyDelete
  14. fishducky21/10/11 09:07

    LOve broken biro's comment. Where do I send the money?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Diana Studer21/10/11 13:01

    Money? Judging by the Odour I can smell from South Africa, the Sterlin they want pounds of, is a fish. Smells fishy?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Crayon21/10/11 21:56

    All too funny. To hell with it, I want an exclamation mark there! I try to limit myself but I think my tombstone will say LOOK! I DIED!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Martin Lower22/10/11 03:18

    Phew! I was beginning to take the viagra ones personally. Now I know other people get them as well...

    ReplyDelete

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