I just got this email from my alumni association:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

We are in the process of updating our database. Your name and address are in our database but we would like to know if we have your correct email address. Email is an inexpensive and effective means to communicate with our constituents and we would like to use it to contact you. We are located at (street address).

Should you have any questions about this message, please contact us at (phone #) or ([e-mail]).
Thank you for your support.

I got to wondering how I could have let them know if they had a wrong email address for me if I had never received their email because the address was wrong so I couldn't have known they had the wrong address. So I responded:

The fact that I got this email means you do have my correct email address. However, if you hadn't had it I wouldn't have received the email and therefore wouldn't have been able to send you the correct address.

Did they think about this logical cul-de-sac? I'm hoping to hear back from them.

I'm posting this because it's the only funny thing that's happened to me today.

[Wounded Bear]

1. Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

[House of Roberts]

2. Les Nessman went on the air

to tell Cincinnati that WKRP was off the air due to the transmitter having been blown up.

[PJMcK]

3. Did they go to college? (n/t)

[dhol82]

4. I always got pissed when the internet would go out and I had to call the company

They invariably had a voice message saying that service would be faster via the internet.

[lapfog_1]

6. yup... in the same category of oxymorons

[csziggy]

13. The local electric coop does the same thing

Though, to their credit they also offer updates via cell phone - which might be useful if I got a cell signal here at home.

I vent by making rude, often obscene, comments to their hold recording. That means I am more cheerful and upbeat when a human picks up the line.

[lapfog_1]

5. The only thing I can think of is that this is a "ping" email

to find out if your email address they have on file is still correct.

Of course, there are many ways to determine if the email is "live" without having to send an actual email. However that doesn't confirm that you own the email.

But you are correct... the logic of sending such an email eludes me. Makes me question (not for the first time) what graduation from some of our "fine academic institutions" actually implies. Thinking may not be in the list of requirements.

[zipplewrath]

7. Poorly worded

They are really asking if the address they are using is the "preferred" one. Many people have multiple addresses. I've had ones that were old and set up to forward mail to the "modern" address. If I received something like this, (and wanted them to find me) I'd often tell them to switch to the newer address.

[nykym]

8. And those drug advertisements...

Do not take so and so drug if you are allergic to it???????

[jmowreader]

15. That's my favorite warning

"Do not take this injectable drug if you are allergic to it or any of its ingredients."

Sounds like a CYA thing to me...if they shoot their magic potion into you and you die five minutes later from a swelled-shut esophagus caused by it, "Judge Kavanaugh, we TOLD him not to take it if he was allergic to it; he took it anyway so he's 100 percent at fault."

[brush]

9. I don't get it. People change email addresses...re-locate, different service provider.

That's not unusual.

Aren't they just checking to see if the address is still current?

If it isn't they'll get one of those error messages back that it didn't go through.

[jberryhill]

10. I get email intended for other people

I got a gmail address early, so I get a lot of email intended for people with my initials.

[mnhtnbb]

11. I have recently been dealing with this to the point it's driving me nuts

and I actually contacted the woman.

In 2005 I got a gmail address with my name. In the last few months I've been getting email intended for a woman with the same name, often when she buys something on-line or registers for something on a website. I suspect she has used her name along with a period or 1 or * or something and is forgetting to put that in when she submits her email. I finally sent her a snail mail letter (her shipping address was on one of the confirmation e-mails I got for something she bought) and yesterday I got a nasty e-mail from her granddaughter telling me I should stop using my e-mail address and disrespecting her grandmother. Say what?!? Unbelievable. Yeah, I'm giving up my more than decade old e-mail because granny is starting to slip?

Some people are really something else. I even contacted paypal and told them this woman had opened a paypal account with an email address that didn't belong to her because one of the confirmation emails I received she had used her paypal account--with my email address--to buy something on line. And the response I get back from paypal is "they can't discuss accounts of other customers". WTF? Thank goodness my paypal account is under a different email address.

[jberryhill]

12. Yep

Amplify that by several more users.

I have gotten to know a couple of them but, yep, one of them took great personal umbrage when I contacted her and said that I’d like to get off of the mailing list for some activity her child is in (because it required additional ID).

And, yep, it’s usually special characters like dots or punctuation that some email systems don’t handle well.

I’m thinking of using one of their Hilton Honor accounts for a free room, though.

[mnhtnbb]

14. I wondered the same thing.

Although most websites have another layer of security these days, some still only require a request to send me a link to change my password tied to the email account. Someone could do some serious damage with that opportunity. I tried to point out the security issue to the granddaughter and she was having none of it. We went back and forth a couple of times. She told me to stop harassing her and grandmother and I told her I wasn't going to be bullied into giving up my email account because her grandmother was having a problem.

I cancelled a hotel reservation she had made about a month ago when I got a confirmation using my email. I thought that would wise her up, but apparently it didn't. She probably thought the hotel screwed up.

[llmart]

16. Did you have an email address from the university as a student?

As another poster indicated, they could just be asking for your preferred email address. Having worked at a university I know that there are places in their database for preferred email address in addition to the school's email address.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

17. No, I graduated in 1981, before the days of email. They've had my same email address

for about 20 years. I just thought it was a weird way to try to find out if they had a correct email address (not a preferred one).