Vendor Spam

[deanwebb]

The time has come. 

I am now marking all incoming emails from vendors as spam. If it's from our sales guy or SE, that gets through. But anything that's not to me personally, I am right-clicking, marking as junk email, blocking the sender, and forgetting about it. If I miss an announcement about Cisco Live! in Paraguay, so be it.

Having this email for the last 3.5 years, every vendor out there knows where to find me and I have to take the inbox into my own hands if I want to survive.

[Dieselboy]

Nice!

I have people that call my office asking to speak to me because "they sent me an email" or "they're following up" only for me to speak to them and I've no idea who they are or what they're trying to sell me.

I've started doing something similar to keep my inbox clean. At one point recently I had THOUSANDS of unread emails in my inbox. The best I've got so far is to file stuff as soon as it comes in (after fixing the mass-email inbox count). If it's important and can be done right away (like reply "yes, I will be in that meeting with free lunch") then I do it right away and move the email out of the inbox. If it is spammy, but I might need it later then it gets moved into a folder called "Important??". If it's spammy and smells like sandwiches, then it will get deleted; repeat offenders get the mail rule applied.

Nice and clean inboxes make greater productivity.. feels like.

With regards to the people calling up. I'm just going to say "no they didnt...". I've been too afraid of saying that before in case I had missed their email and it was important or we had been previously discussing. Now I can say it with confidence.

[Dieselboy]

I've also been unsubscribing from spam and that does mostly work.

[deanwebb]

Not only do I have the spam calls, I also have FAX machines that keep calling my number! Last 3.5 years, all the dang time.

[Dieselboy]

When I moved into this company, The reception girls were using DECT phones which were connected to the old business number which is now the fax line. When the phone rang, they were picking up "just in case".

I removed all the DECT phones because they interfere with wifi. Occasionally we get SPAM calls coming in on the fax line, the fax machine answers, and we hear a muffled "helloooooo" shortly before the fax machine responds in R2D2-speak
So, if it's any consolation - we occasionally got your back

[deanwebb]

I actually *do* feel better knowing that some telemarketer is getting an earful of fax machine. That provides balance to the universe. Thank you, Dieselboy, and keep the fax line running.