The Underscore Archives

I think we've all had this problem in the past but I felt the need to rant.
We're shortly going to be commissioning a small piece of HR-related
consultancy work, and specified in the tender details that we don't have
much time and would rather field all initial questions via email to save
repeating the same things over and over again. The first thing I received in
my mail box on Saturday was the standard text-book sales response "I'll call
you at 10am and I'll be in the area to pop in on Monday" yada yada.

So I emailed (on Sunday!!) explaining as politely as possible that I've read
the sales techniques books too and that whilst a meeting is statistically
shown to increase chances of a sale, so is adhering to the request of the
client regarding how they are to be contacted. I even pointed them to my
specially written page on procurement (search for nameless procurement on
google) just to reinforce my message (the "cakes and confectionery" quote is
all mine :-) ).

This morning I get not one, not two but three phone calls from that same
person (which of course I didn't take). No chocolates, no jelly babies -
just cold, hard calls. The last time this sort of thing happened with a
company, I reported them to trading standards, and the time before that I
cast a hex on them (not sure it worked but it made me feel a whole lot
better). I'm not actually sure how to escalate my response beyond these
sorts of actions but if any of you have any ideas, I'm feeling justified and
vengeful...

Jaya