I’ve been receiving emails from a certain ‘Avid-Avidedu‘ for months now. These are generally announcements of events of some sort, usually focussing on culture with a semi-religious undertone. It didn’t interest me the first couple of times and I just deleted the mails without a thought.

After a few more of these came my way, I began looking for a way to unsubscribe. But that courtesy lifeline, provided to mailing list recipients, even if it is in tiny letters, “To unsubscribe, please click here“, was nowhere to be seen.

I took that for a simple (but really, quite unforgivable) oversight. So I emailed back to the addresses, instead, telling them that I was not interested and could they please take me off their list? That mail saw no replies.

Many more days and emails later, I visited their website to look at the ‘Contact Us’ section. All it had was their postal address and a form to sign up for updates. There wasn’t a section to leave a message. Interestingly, now the website is still there but the ‘Contact Us’ section doesn’t lead anywhere. Typing the URL in takes you to a 404 error.

They are also on Facebook but their page does not allow outside posts on the wall. And here is their Twitter stream. I’ve left a comment on one of their Facebook posts, sent them a Facebook message and tweeted to them. No responses to report.

Here’s what their latest email had.:

Look at the quality of text, images etc. There’s obviously a lot of work going on to create this.

Never mind the ranting about whether an ordinary netizen should be subjected to this today. What purpose does this serve exactly? There are emails coming my way, periodically so obviously someone at their end is working and working hard to put that content out. What kind of a bizarre system is this that churns out content, events, updates of those events but makes no response to messages? Being a content provider myself, I can only pity that poor souls who work so hard to create experiences & content. This is only alienating their audience and turning indifference to irritation.

Here are all the ways they’re managing to throw their content out, while shutting out anyone else’s voice to them:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/avidedu
Twitter: https://twitter.com/avidlearning
Email addresses: avid@essar.com
Phone numbers: (from this tweet)

Avid Education, you need to learn how to listen to your fellow netizens and possible audience. Essar, what are you thinking?

Update: I just received a reply to my Facebook message, asking for my email address and saying that they would take me off. Avid, I hope you’ve taken note of this experience to spot a glaring problem in your online presence.

Yes, my dear condescending younger reader, some day you will cringe at the mention of Justin Beiber, as I am now. Till then, enjoy some ‘retro’ partying and thank your stars I didn’t talk about this other song (which made me cringe even then).

High Street Phoenix was where I was headed, for a quick lunch, for window-shopping at the fun stores and actually shopping at the boring ones (Big Bazaar). Most of the big stores don’t let me carry in that handy Cotton World cloth bag that I’ve been toting around on just such quick shopping excursions. Big Bazaar goes one further in the ‘punish the customer for coming to us’ by making you deal with grumpy baggage personnel or forcing you to put said handbags into ugly transparent, plastic attaches. I wanted to go light.

It was a sunny day and travelling anywhere in this city without protection for face & hair is stupid. And it looked like I’d be doing a lot of walking. The brocade slingpouch (see earlier in Streetsmart Colour) and my steel-grey moccasins came in useful. The tee-shirt was a gift from Meetu and unlike other brand-bearing tee-shirts, this one fits well and doesn’t make me feel like a walking advertisement. And finally, I tossed a thin silk scarf across my shoulders to keep my neck warm, to tie my hair with & to cover my face while travelling.

You know how the fashion industry says things like ‘Great style should be effortless’? This is my take on the idea. When I looked into the mirror, I felt rather proud with the way it turned out since it didn’t cost much (time or money), looked stylish, was suitable for the occasion and stayed comfortable all through. So I grabbed my camera for a picture, when I got back. Note that this is how I looked after the commute, crowd-jostling & grocery shopping, minus any touch-ups.

I Wear:

• Faded blue jeans: Levis Diva
• Black tee-shirt: Courtesy Meetu of WOGMA
• Violet postman’s hat: Baggit, Shoppers Stop
• Silk scarf: Cottage Emporium, New Delhi
• Steel-grey moccasins:
• Brocade slingpouch: Street stall, Connaught Place, New Delhi

*Image via taoty on FreeDigitalPhotos.