I recently spent a night in Kristiansund, Norway, which should absolutely not to be confused with Kristiansand, Norway. The two cities are much farther apart geographically than lexicographically:

I wonder how many people wind up in the wrong one each year. I am confident the number is not zero.

Anyhow, I stayed at a lovely little apartment found on Booking.com run by a kind woman named Annette. She managed things so nicely that when Booking auto-prompted me to leave a review, I didn’t even mind. I wrote a few lines encouraging future travelers to consider the spot, in the hopes that it would be helpful.

I thought that would be the end of it.

Of course, it was not. After I followed their request urging me to leave a review, Booking then followed up by dropping this in my inbox:

Read my review? I don’t need to do that. I wrote it!

This past Sunday, I received an email from “Do Not Reply” with the subject line “Vehicle Registration Renewal Reminder”. Here’s what it looked like:

This is a very, very bad email, beginning with the awful A.I. slop image at the top. Here’s a larger look at just that:

Lest you have any doubts whatsoever as to the origin of this image, note that they didn’t even crop out the Gemini logo from the bottom right. While I’ve compressed the image above, was a needlessly large 760 KB png file. Awful.

When I saw this email, I was quite certain it was a phishing scam. I assumed that the link inside would take me to a scammy replica of a government website, one that would steal credit card numbers. But no! As far as I can determine, this is a legitimate email from the RMV.¹ The lone link in it does indeed go to http://mass.gov/rmv, which forwards on to the official RMV site.² And indeed, my car registration is expiring in a couple of months.

In the past, I have always received an official form in the mail which can be used to renew my registration. For many years, that letter has simply prompted me to go online to renew. Given that, a switch to email notifications make sense. They sure ought to look a lot more official than this, however.

Footnotes:

1. What’s most often known as the “Department of Motor Vehicles” (DMV) is indeed called the “Registry of Motor Vehicles” (RMV) in Massachusetts. Why? Just to be difficult, I assume. But we’re far from the only ones. ↩︎

2. I’m not sure why the original link is http:// rather than https://, but the forward does lead to a secure page. ↩︎

I’ve recently received a higher than average number of dumb emails. Let’s talk about a few of them.

Subject Lines From Dumb Emails I’ve Recently Received

• ***Attention requested, Paul: You’re getting the latest about these scams
  Oh boy, hot scam news! And yes, those asterisks were in the subject line.

• Spring fun begins now, %%Informal Greeting%!
  Presumably, the mailing software for this message would’ve replaced the variable %%Informal Greeting%% with, I don’t know, “friend”, or “amigo”, or “buckaroo”. But whoops, they left off a % and the whole thing broke.

• We’ve Updated Our Terms of Use
  I’m sure the lawyers think they’re best served by letting everyone know about fine print updates, but Shake Shack, I really, really do not care about your terms of use. I buy a better-than-you’d-expect Veggie Shack from you perhaps twice a year, and that’s the entirety of our relationship.

• We’ve Updated Our Terms of Use
  Bonus, Shack Shake sent me the exact same message ten days later. I’m not sure if they felt it important to remind me about the change, or if they actually updated their terms of use twice in quick succession. You know, because I didn’t actually read the terms for buying a veggie burger.

• Learn more about our updated Terms of Service
  I don’t want to, Google. I’m also not going to read about “Updates to Google Play Terms of Service” that you emailed about three days later.

• Your credit score has changed-here’s how
  When I opened this email, I learned that my credit score had dipped by exactly one point. Capital One even included a graphic:

  

  They did not, however, include my actual score within the email. That might have been mildly helpful, though I’m confident that a change of one point is very much just noise.

• Paul, you’re no longer enrolled in CreditWise from Capital One
  After receiving the previous email, I sought a way to turn off these pointless notifications. Capital One said “If you no longer want to receive these emails, unfortunately you’ll have to unenroll from CreditWise.” OK then.

You might think this points to a method of getting fewer dumb emails, by having fewer accounts overall. Alas, even that strategy seems imperfect. Back in February, I cancelled my Alliant credit card and closed my account entirely. Nevertheless, as I was writing this post, I received an email from them. The subject line? “Your July Alliant credit card statement is now available online”

Just before 9 AM yesterday, I posted about Dawn Zuidgeest-Craft, the septuagenarian resident. Approximately 90 minutes later, I received an email to my work account with the subject line “if Dawn can be a doctor at 72- it’s never too late for anything”. I was initially confused as to what was happening. When I opened the email, however, I saw that it was simply spam. Impressively well-targeted spam, but spam nonetheless:

As I know the impact an uncommon last name can have, I’ve lightly censored the above email.

I occasionally mention my day job on here, but One Foot Tsunami and Rogue Amoeba are really quite distinct entities. They do not overlap. Attempting to leverage a cursory glance at my humor website to get my company as a payroll client is at best gross, and at worst creepy. Don’t do this.

When covering the automated rudeness of Resy, I said:

I’m a responsible adult who keeps a digital calendar. When I book a table for dinner, I also create an event, complete with reminders. Thanks to this system, I don’t believe I’ve ever missed a reservation in my life. That’s not boasting, it’s just how one should act in society.

This system continues to prevent me from being a flake, ensuring I remember and attend all manner of events. I need no further assistance, but boy do a lot of barely related services want to offer me some.

The latest was the online invitation company Paperless Post. Recently, I received a friendly birthday invitation sent with their system. I like cake, so I figured I’d go. I put the event in my calendar and then used the RSVP link to respond in the affirmative. That should have been the end of it, but it was not.

Instead, Paperless Post offered me this:

As you will no doubt guess, I clicked that de-emphasized “Skip” button. I do not need more automated texts in my life. Also, could we all just affirm once and for all that we know that message and data rates may apply? I shudder to think of the cumulative amount of time wasted reading the endless stream of notices of that obvious fact.

As I thought about this goofy feature more, it occurred to me that a text an hour before an event is surely rather late. How many people are reminded by such a text, and actually manage to show? Rather than alerting someone they should be attending an event soon, it’s almost certain to be the first indication that they’ll be missing it.

There are two other options offered, one of which is a day before reminder. That could be helpful, and it seems like it ought to be the default.

Either way, though, I’ll be passing. I don’t need to be receiving a text message like this:

It’s time for another review of nonsense that’s appeared in my email inbox. Today, we’ve got three distinct offenders.

OpenTable

A recent email from the reservation service had the subject line “Where to book for National Couples Day”. I have to admit that it drew me in, because what in the hell is “National Couples Day”? Couples already have a day, and it’s called Valentine’s Day. They also have at least one anniversary, if not multiple.

National Couple’s Day is on the horizon, and while it may get less hype than Valentine’s Day, everyone benefits from throwing an extra date night on the calendar—even if it’s a friend date. Start your planning with the most romantic tables in Boston.

OK, once you start adding “friend dates” to this, you’ve really lost the plot. Get the hell out of here with this trash, OpenTable, and take your inconsistent apostrophe with you.

Capital One

Ah, yes. Fall is approaching. There’s a crispness to the air. The leaves are changing colors, pumpkin spice is appearing, and scammers are switching up their fraud tactics. What?

I skimmed this email, and I was quite tickled by one of their recommendations. It read “Never send money to someone you’ve never met face to face”. For quite literally decades at my day job, I have been paying people I’ve never met face to face, including one of my co-founders. Have I been getting scammed?

CVS

I recently had an appointment for a flu shot, because despite the beliefs of at least one dope who I can’t believe graduated from a prestigious medical school, science is real. I checked in at CVS around 10:10 AM, and I was back out the door just a few minutes later. It was great.

The email I received two and a half hours later, however, was not:

Please note the timestamp in the upper right corner. I’m a responsible adult with a digital calendar. I don’t need a reminder email for my vaccination appointment, but if I did, it sure ought to arrive before the appointment.

Instead, you already saw me, CVS. And as mentioned above, I did arrive five minutes before my scheduled appointment. Now, it’s over. My arm is a little sore, my immunity is increasing, and we’re done. Just like this post.

Recently, Amtrak sent me a “member exclusive” email to let me know that the future was approaching the station.

[A]s one of our most valued Amtrak Guest Rewards® members, we wanted you to be the first to know that NextGen Acela will soon be available to book on select departures. This modern, elevated experience will change the way you look at train travel. Watch your inbox for more information on how to book your future NextGen Acela travel with Amtrak.

I say, with zero sarcasm, that this is exciting! Acela might be the world’s worst high-speed train service, but it’s America’s best.¹ I take Amtrak from Boston to New York City whenever I can, and if possible, I choose Acela. It’s an excellent experience. When I received this email, I was eager to get a glimpse at these new trains:

Apparently, the future is trains that look exceedingly penile. So be it.

Look at that baby zoom! Now, I often work on my laptop when I travel, so I was pleased to find the email touting “Free, 5G enabled WiFi, power outlets and USB ports at every seat”. Immediately, however, I was curious as to the exact type of USB ports we were talking about here. I clicked through to their site to see what I could see, but found no pictures.

So I watched their one minute sizzle reel, which was a rather ridiculous 300+ MB in size.² Halfway through, it showed off multiple features of the new interiors using Apple’s favorite keynote trick, the bento box:

Oh, zoom in on the upper left!

Aw, man. USB-A?! That is not the future.

Nevertheless, I say with still zero sarcasm, I am excited to ride on one of these new trains soon.

Footnotes:

1. Also, sadly, only. ↩︎

2. A much smaller version of their video, whose original filename was “amtrak-nextgen-acela-sizzle.mp4”, is archived here. ↩︎