I have worked in “serious” PR-Business and am familiar with online marketing. Everyone is talking about it but nobody does anything against aggressive, annoying spam mails, so here are some of the worst that landed in my mailbox or fon.

5. COULD BE DONE BETTER: Promo and ad mails from people you personally KNOW that you have asked to delete your email from their PR mailings for every single one of their parties or unnecessary events. Nope. Some don’t get it. Nothing is wrong with your music, but it is simply not my taste. Or it was played ten years ago. Or the tunes you want me to write about just sound like any other tune you can hear at any club or even bar in Berlin at any time of the day. Or I simply do not want to read your malfunctioning mail-outs with a font size of 26 and colourful so my eyes hurt reading a word, or, I am fed up receiving five emails a day for the same event, just because YOU forgot to put the date of your event in the mail, and the location, and an additional line-up, and a change of the location, or a change back of the location. Go, figure.

ADVICE: Get an intern for sending out your promo mails, or just sit down and read through the manuals. You can do it. I believe in you.

4. *CRINGE*: sun:sun records, run by names as Michael Deep, Mendezz, Andrew500, Bojan Milenkovic. Their website refers to their facebook page (duh, without disclaimer!) A&R is the dude called Michael Deep, and you can reach him here: https://www.facebook.com/Michaeldeep. He is behind the unwanted promo mails by sun:sun-records and supposed behind all MD MUSIC PROMOTION, because, it seems a bit odd that spam mails arrive, promoting the same dude on two records, right? And then it is all about this dude who calls himself Michael Deep, am I right?

FACTS: Every couple of weeks, they send out an email titled “NEW RELEASES” or “OUT NOW” – with only a link to a site where you can buy the tracks from artists you do not know and not one line of introduction of who this is and why you should be interested getting emails like that.

ADVICE: If you want bloggers to write about your artists who are not well known or need some promotion, first of all: introduce your artist and label and music. Who are you, what do you want from the blog? And: Why would anyone make the effort to listen to a promo that is an online link, not even downloadable?! Second: PAY FOR THE FEATURES on the blogs. Why should anyone write for free when you make money out of selling it through the promotion bloggers do? Third: PROMOTE the interview or review you requested, that is the least you can do to get the name of the blog out there, when you did not even pay for the amount of effort and time put into the feature and storage space on the blog. Last, but not least, because many forget and few remember: Say thanks at the end of the year when your artist, record, label has been a success to those people who supported you.

3. THIS HURTS: aeria games Europe, Pascal Zuta (Geschäftsführer aeria games / CEO)

For months, I am being spammed by aeria games, this online game site nobody in my friends circles belongs to. All clicking on the unsubscribing button if there was one, emailing (btw, they send out advertising emails from email addresses you cannot send a reply back), complaining to service@aeriagames.com or info@aericagames.com did not work.

I usually don’t mind just using the spam mail filter for unwanted advertisement, but seeing that the CEO is a contact of my friends from the tech scene made me write a personal message on FB, which apparently landed in the spam message folder, as we are not direct contacts.

So, I wrote on twitter: “Sent out a (legal) warning. I did not subscribe to @aeriagames and do not want to receive further spam mails #spamming #wtf”. This is what Pascal Zuta, head of aeria games Europe GmbH had to say: “wer bist du?”

Well, apparently, Mister aeria-games has not only missed some grammar classes, but also has a bad “netikette”, which means manners on the internet, as he used the colloquial “du” instead of writing i.e. “oh sorry, what do you mean (if he does not understand the message: “I am getting unwanted spam from you”), do I know you (“Sie” instead of “Du”, which Germans only use when you are on friendly terms with them)”.

ADVISE: Someone who is managing online games should maybe take some classes on how to move through social media, especially if he gets paid that aeria games spams people who are not at all interested in his product with heaps of unwanted advertisement. Seriously? #WTF #Spammails

Thank God, Germany is a country with a good legal system.

2. REALLY BAD and ILLEGAL: o2 is the WORST mobile fon and itnernet provider in Germany. The worst.

So, after all these years I have been tricked into o2 (oh, once they claimed I forgot to cancel the 2 year-contract, so it got automatically renewed) and despite putting money into this company for 7 years, I still have no net in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg – neither mobile fon nor internet. Since my better half is living at prenzlauer Berg and we spend half of our time there, I have half of my time no mobile fon net.

The other thing is, when it raisn, my o2 DSL internet is not working. Seriously, it just does not work, and I live in central Mitte Berlin / Prenzlauer Berg, the heart of startups and internet café heaven. Nobody beleives me and o2 says there is no such thing, people believe me when they are at my place when it is rainy. And the internet is not working. At all. Welcome to o2 life, guys!

So, this time, I cancelled my contract in January 2014. For January 2015. I did not get a written reply. I contacted them again, after a whole month and three complaints, they managed to answer me that the contract was not cancelled. So I sent them via faximile and snail mail with authorization my termination of the mobile fon contract: especially stating I did not want to be ever contacted by fon again.

“Hiermit kündige ich NOCHMALS meinen o2 Mobilfunkvertrag für die Nummer 0176-xxxxx zum Ablauf des bestehenden Vertrages (21. Januar 2015).

Bitte lassen Sie mir zeitnah eine schriftliche Bestätigung der Kündigung  zukommen.

Ich möchte ausdrücklich in Zukunft weder von Ihnen angerufen werden, noch irgendwelche Werbemails zu einer Vertragsverlängerung von Ihnen bekommen.”

So, after they received the cancellation, the phone terror started. From the o2 customer support number: +4917688815996, they called me the following times:

Mo, 28.07.2014 14:01

Di, 29.07.2014 14:16

29.07.2014 17:35

29.07.2014 18:53

Mi, 30.07.2014 14:32

30.07.2014 16:12

Do, 31.07.2014 14:44

31.07.2014 15:25

31.07.2014 16:41

31.07.2014 19:48 (four times a day, seriously? o2 is worse than my worst stalker!)

Fr, 01.08.2014 14:47

Then, Monday 04.08.2014, 10:07, they sent this SMS:

„Sehr geehrter o2 Kunde. Zu Ihrer Kündigung haben wir noch wichtige Fragen. Bitte rufen Sie uns kostenlos zurück unter 08000214444. Ihr o2 Team“

Really funny. When you want to reach their customer support, no one will pick up the premium customer line for half an hour. Nobody answers to complaint emails for a month. Nobody is available in the o2 online.de support chat. And if you cancel a contract, they do not process it unless you write them via fax AND mail with a return form they suddenly are very eager to talk with you, even when you explicitly said you do not want to be contacted via fon.

Seriously, o2 is the worst mobile fon net and internet provider, and I can highly recommend you to take another provider with a D2 net in Germany.

PS. Now they received and processed my cancellation of the contract and wrote a letter that I should call them back to clear some “open questions” – there are none, but at least, after January 21st, I will no longer be with that creepy provider any more.

1. WORST: MD* MUSIC PROMOTION – Congrats, dude, you won the first price of being a douche in PR in the music business!

Quite a while ago, I got these really annoying promo emails – with a link to a track which I should buy on beatport, without introducing who was sending me this and what they wanted to do with the info. I erased quite a few, some landed directly in my spam mail folder. The oldest left is from 2013-09-26, a link to a record by artists nobody knows, which had enlisted “supported by” names nobody knows either. It was by sun:sun-records, a label from Switzerland I have never heard of, nor my friends knew.

My emails to them include:

“I unsubscribed from your list in November 2013 – as you were spamming me with unwanted emails.

I never subscribed to your list.

(…)

I DO NOT WISH TO BE ON YOUR MAILING LIST.

DO NOT WRITE ME AGAIN.”

Unsubscribing did not work, as well as sending emails to mdmusicpromo@gmail.com.

As I received promo emails from a label from an artist I really like (NOIR) yesterday and today, I wrote the management of that label to do something about it. This is an excerpt of their very kind and helpful answer mails:

“I’m not quite sure what this is. I will consult directly with Noir and investigate for you.

(…)

I have checked with Noir & we have no contract with MD Music promotion.

We are not sure why they are sending out these mails and we will investigate and ask them to stop sending them using our releases.

Sorry for this inconvenience but it is nothing official that has been approved by Noir Music.”

FACTS: They are sending out emails you did not ask for, for artists you never heard of, without any explanation. Unsubscribing does not work, as well as emailing. They do not react and keep sending you spam. Worse, they use content, that was not approved with the labels they are promoting.

* If MD does not stand for Michael Deep, then I don’t know. Please correct me, if I am wrong! I do not want to accuse him of spamming with MD MUSIC PROMOTION in addition to s:s-records.

An honorable mention to the following: Cross-media cacophony (those of you who automatically post the same content on twitter, facebook, instagram, tumblr, pinterest and whatever social media that is available – just don’t do it. You are spamming every channel of our social media, and we do not want to see the same dumb picture of you eating stuff when we already liked it on facebook or gave it a pity star on twitter. Use your social media wisely!), private facebook spamming (you change your profile picture three times a day, your cover pictures, too, you change your post title every 5 minutes and all the other lamenting stuff to get some attention. Seriously? It is really getting on everybody’s nerves and you have been muted.)