Join the service that you already joined!

Solicitations to join a service that you have already joined are embarrassing. They're even more embarrassing when the potential (actual) member can't do anything about it.

I recently received an email that read as follows:

Dear John Bredehoft,

One or more of our government agency members* would like for you to register with [NAME OF SERVICE] to receive notice of their bids, RFPs, and contract opportunities. To respond to these bids, RFPs, and contract opportunities, registration with [NAME OF SERVICE] is required. Register your company today at no charge--it's fast and easy.

* The specific government agency member cannot be provided as we represent hundreds of agencies who have asked us to continually find a variety of vendors to participate in the bidding of their RFP's and contracts.

There's only one problem - I'm already registered with this particular service.

Actually, there's a second problem. The email came from a generic email address, so I can't necessarily write the service back and say "Please tell the government agency that I am already registered with your service under the ID xxx." If I sent such an email, the service presumably wouldn't act on it.

Oh, and there's a third problem. This email was sent to the email address that I used when signing up for the service in question. This isn't a case where the service found my old Motorola email address and sent the solicitation to that one.

So, in effect, the service is using its list of existing customers to send out requests to...become a customer.

Not impressed.