So here's a first...

I get this email last night:

Time: 12:59AM

From: ***@yahoo.com

Subject: e mail address is correct

Body: i looked at it again and u r wrong

What?

It appears that the guy is replying to something, but I've never emailed him anything.  I do a search of his email address in my gmail account and find it in one of the attachments. So I figure out that he's someone that filled out a "free info" form on this one website. So I decide to be nice and email him back to try and figure out what on earth he's talking about, since he appears to be mid conversation with someone.

(As a side note, it's always nice when people email and say things like. "I can't get this page to work." Like I'm supposed to magically know what site they're talking about out of the hundreds that I work on. On top of that, what does "to work" mean.  You can't get what to work? You have to tell me what you're trying to do. And then you need to tell me what happens when you try it. Then I have something to go on.)

Anyway, I email the guy back saying, "What is this in reference to". Then, this morning, I have an angry voice mail from him! It's too bad you can't hear his voice but here's a transcript:

my name is ***

you sent me a message about my email

I signed up for some of your information

a free trial

and after I typed everything down

you sent me that it was an error

that for one thing that I had sent to you people before, which I had never done

and you said my email address is wrong

(starts to get really irritated here)

which I... I checked it, I looked at your own typing and you had it right

I don't know why you would say it was wrong when it was in fact right

I know my email address

(hangs up)

So after this I realized what the problem is.  The first time he filled out the form it said (the page said, not me): Thanks for signing up but we already have your info. It checks the database before a new lead is added so that there are no duplicates.  He said he never filled out the form before, yet I looked his email address up in the database and he did in fact sign up in 2007. 

So I guess he tried filling the form out again and this time he got an error message that his email address was wrong. Well, it only checks formatting. So if it told him it was wrong, it was. Like he put a space in it somewhere and email addresses don't have spaces. Or left off the @yahoo.com part. Or something like that. It happens all the time.

I just find it highly amusing that he's acting like there's some person sitting "behind" the website, reading over the form info he submits and typing messages back to him when he does something wrong, like there's some army of elves that work behind the scenes 24/7.

Lets start here: "which I... I checked it, I looked at your own typing and you had it right".

This must be in reference to my reply to him by email.  Of course I got your email address right, I just hit reply. And what, I'm the same "person" who told you it was wrong earlier? What on earth is his concept of the internet? 

Maybe he and Ted Stevens can figure it out together.

This was definitely a first. I'm definitely not going calling him back. If he's comfortable enough to use the internet and think that it talks back to him, I'm concerned that he won't believe anything I say.