Poorservice - I'm sending Hanlon Realty a link to a course in email etiquette

My boyfriend purchased a condo nearly five years ago with the assistance of Hanlon Realty, and we last corresponded with one of their agents about two years ago. So, you can imagine our surprise this evening when we each received an email from the owner, inviting us to their upcoming customer appreciation party. We won't attend the party, and we won't do business with Hanlon Realty again. Perhaps many of the hundreds of customers and business partners who have just had their email addresses distributed publicly to all Hanlon Realty's contacts won't either.

Yes, that's right, enough email addresses and names in the "To" field that Google documents wouldn't let me paste the list into a spreadsheet in one shot. To quote my boyfriend after he read the email, "I feel violated." And then some well-placed adjectival expletives.

Sure, they're offering to enter us into a draw for cruise, but they are also opening our email addresses up to a barrage of offers for penis enlargements, Nigerian inheritances, and a whiter smile. Come on, this is 2010. You need to know how to use BCC by now. To handle your customers' personal information with such disregard for privacy is simply terrible service, not to mention plain stupid. I mean, people don't generally give out their fake email to their real estate agent; this shit is going to primary (in many cases, business) addresses. Just shocking.

Anyway, I just replied to the email and asked to be removed from their contact lists. I bet I'm not the only one doing that tonight.