Scam emails, phone calls, etc.

[Old Grumpy]

Thanks.. I've seen that on bank correspondence, but never used it.

[Petrushka]

Probably not a scam but ...

For the second Christmas in a row I received emails, being copied in, from a vicar in a church in the diocese of Exeter discussing details of their Service schedule for the year. I assumed an error and just deleted them in 2022. However, the emails reappeared in 2023 and, having done extensive Google research and been satisfied they are genuine, emailed them back to point out the error and ask that my email address be removed from their records. I received a somewhat unfriendly reply back but was told they had no idea where my email address came from but would remove it.

Now, this morning, I've had an email from the property administrator at Exeter Cathedral to all churches in the diocese regarding boiler maintenance!!

I'm totally mystified why they have my email address. I've never visited Exeter, its cathedral or even the county of Devon and I have no connection with anyone there.

Where could they have got my email address from? My first thought was that it might have been intended for someone of a very similar name but misspelled. If so, I'd have expected the correct recipient to have questioned why their emails weren't being received?

Can anyone offer a reason why this is happening and if I have any reason to be concerned? What I don't get is why someone at Exeter isn't wondering 'who is this person we copy in on our emails'??

The whole thing is bizarre!

[Old Grumpy]

Probably not a scam but ...

For the second Christmas in a row I received emails, being copied in, from a vicar in a church in the diocese of Exeter discussing details of their Service schedule for the year. I assumed an error and just deleted them in 2022. However, the emails reappeared in 2023 and, having done extensive Google research and been satisfied they are genuine, emailed them back to point out the error and ask that my email address be removed from their records. I received a somewhat unfriendly reply back but was told they had no idea where my email address came from but would remove it.

Now, this morning, I've had an email from the property administrator at Exeter Cathedral to all churches in the diocese regarding boiler maintenance!!

I'm totally mystified why they have my email address. I've never visited Exeter, its cathedral or even the county of Devon and I have no connection with anyone there.

Where could they have got my email address from? My first thought was that it might have been intended for someone of a very similar name but misspelled. If so, I'd have expected the correct recipient to have questioned why their emails weren't being received?

Can anyone offer a reason why this is happening and if I have any reason to be concerned? What I don't get is why someone at Exeter isn't wondering 'who is this person we copy in on our emails'??

The whole thing is bizarre!

No explanation, I'm afraid, but I am not surprised the originator appears not to be "wondering 'who is this person' ". Your email is likely to have been included in a Send list with multiple other recipients emails all added at one click of a button.

[Pulcinella]

Probably not a scam but ...

For the second Christmas in a row I received emails, being copied in, from a vicar in a church in the diocese of Exeter discussing details of their Service schedule for the year. I assumed an error and just deleted them in 2022. However, the emails reappeared in 2023 and, having done extensive Google research and been satisfied they are genuine, emailed them back to point out the error and ask that my email address be removed from their records. I received a somewhat unfriendly reply back but was told they had no idea where my email address came from but would remove it.

Now, this morning, I've had an email from the property administrator at Exeter Cathedral to all churches in the diocese regarding boiler maintenance!!

I'm totally mystified why they have my email address. I've never visited Exeter, its cathedral or even the county of Devon and I have no connection with anyone there.

Where could they have got my email address from? My first thought was that it might have been intended for someone of a very similar name but misspelled. If so, I'd have expected the correct recipient to have questioned why their emails weren't being received?

Can anyone offer a reason why this is happening and if I have any reason to be concerned? What I don't get is why someone at Exeter isn't wondering 'who is this person we copy in on our emails'??

The whole thing is bizarre!

I can't imagine anyone being bothered enough to sift through email mailing lists looking for such anomalies, even if there were an easy way of identifying them.
It's all I can do to cull our limited Christmas Letter list once year!
The chances are that, as you suspect, they'll be intended for someone with a very similar address (who may well actually be getting them to their correct address too, as if they complained they'd just have been found missing and added).
So best to 'unsubscribe' if that's an option, or ask to be removed manually.
But perhaps you should consider visiting Exeter Cathedral sometime: it's very impressive!

[Andrew Slater]

Where could they have got my email address from? My first thought was that it might have been intended for someone of a very similar name but misspelled. If so, I'd have expected the correct recipient to have questioned why their emails weren't being received?

Can anyone offer a reason why this is happening and if I have any reason to be concerned? What I don't get is why someone at Exeter isn't wondering 'who is this person we copy in on our emails'??

The whole thing is bizarre!

I suspect that the email list would be quite long, so that the correct recipient's name would have been added to the end of the list without anyone investigating the problem and trawling through the names in the list. It's just surprising that you haven't received a whole lot more emails from various parts of the Exeter diocese!

I see in my tardiness I've crossed with Pulcinella.

[Old Grumpy]

Perhaps you should contact the Cathedral Administrator: Catherine.escott@exeter-cathedral.org.uk

She is listed in the Complaints Policy pdf available from the Contact section of the cathedral website

[Old Grumpy]

I can't imagine anyone being bothered enough to sift through email mailing lists looking for such anomalies, even if there were an easy way of identifying them.
It's all I can do to cull our limited Christmas Letter list once year!
The chances are that, as you suspect, they'll be intended for someone with a very similar address (who may well actually be getting them to their correct address too, as if they complained they'd just have been found missing and added).
So best to 'unsubscribe' if that's an option, or ask to be removed manually.
But perhaps you should consider visiting Exeter Cathedral sometime: it's very impressive!

In my experience "Unsubscribe" doesn't always work!

[Petrushka]

Perhaps you should contact the Cathedral Administrator: Catherine.escott@exeter-cathedral.org.uk

She is listed in the Complaints Policy pdf available from the Contact section of the cathedral website

Many thanks for that, OG, I will email her shortly.

Pulcinella: there's no unsubscribe option as I'm clearly considered to be within the cathedral administration rather than a member of the congregation as it were. A visit to Exeter Cathedral is one for the ever expanding bucket list!

[Pulcinella]

Many thanks for that, OG, I will email her shortly.

Pulcinella: there's no unsubscribe option as I'm clearly considered to be within the cathedral administration rather than a member of the congregation as it were. A visit to Exeter Cathedral is one for the ever expanding bucket list!

I hate the way you get besieged daily after making a purchase from somewhere like Curry's (my new phone being the latest cause); I let them continue for while to see if anything useful (such as offers) turns up, and then unsubscribe, which seems to work. Screw-fix is another culprit: I KNOW where the shop is and don't need any more screwdrivers at present, thank you.

[Sir Velo]

Is it worth drafting a response along the lines of "Dear All, Thank you for including me in this correspondence. However, you may wish to reconsider whether my continuing membership of this group is appropriate due to the fact that as a life long practising diabolist I may not be the kind of individual with whom you would wish to be associated.", or some such?

[Petrushka]

Is it worth drafting a response along the lines of "Dear All, Thank you for including me in this correspondence. However, you may wish to reconsider whether my continuing membership of this group is appropriate due to the fact that as a life long practising diabolist I may not be the kind of individual with whom you would wish to be associated.", or some such?

That's as unlike me as you could imagine! I'm politeness personified, love visiting cathedrals and like church music, a sort of Septimus Harding perhaps.

Anyway, I've done a very polite email to Exeter and hope for an equally polite reply in return!

[french frank]

I hate the way you get besieged daily after making a purchase from somewhere like Curry's (my new phone being the latest cause); I let them continue for while to see if anything useful (such as offers) turns up, and then unsubscribe, which seems to work.

Ditto. And if they are legitimate businesses they should have a functioning Unsubscribe link. I tend to suspect the kind I had this morning (it automatically went into Junk) from Asda, with whom I have no memory of ever doing business - and certainly woild not have shared my email address with them. There was also an almost identical one from Sainsbury's, both having a surprise for me. Sorry, but don't bother with surprises from Tesco, Aldi, Lidl or Morrisons either!

[Serial_Apologist]

I hate the way you get besieged daily after making a purchase from somewhere like Curry's (my new phone being the latest cause); I let them continue for while to see if anything useful (such as offers) turns up, and then unsubscribe, which seems to work. Screw-fix is another culprit: I KNOW where the shop is and don't need any more screwdrivers at present, thank you.

I get particularly annoyed at emails from service providers, my most recent example being my boiler servicer, demanding to know what I think of a job just done, when hardly enough time has passed to see whether said job was a success or not, what did I think of the engineer, and so on. They often say "this should not take up more than a few minutes of your time", and it ends up occupying half an hour. In this particular case I even got a questionaire on the quality of the original emailed notification - was I satisfied that it had been dealt with well, OK or unsatisfactorily, etc? Understandably, you may think, I did not respond; I then received a reminder: "We have had no reply to the questionnaire we sent out... etc"!!!

[french frank]

my most recent example being my boiler servicer, demanding to know what I think of a job just done,

How likely are you to recommend your boiler servicer, on a scale of 1-10 (1= not at all likely, 10 = very, very likely)?

[Serial_Apologist]

How likely are you to recommend your boiler servicer, on a scale of 1-10 (1= not at all likely, 10 = very, very likely)?

That kind of thing - all scientifically precisioned for optimising their consumer demographic in order to explain the obvious, I'm sure!