The Biggest Email Mistake To Avoid

A recent email blunder by Angelo Mozilo, head honcho of Countrywide Mortgage, proves that even millionaire CEOs are not immune from making embarrassing mistakes. As reported by the L.os Angeles Times, Mozilo did what many of us common people have done at some time or other: he hit the reply button to an email instead of the forward button. The harried CEO had intended to forward a customer’s email to some of his subordinates but instead he clicked reply and sent his message assist to the customer. Mozilo’s price was not intended for the customers’ eyes; quite the opposite. In his message, he described the customer’s email as “unbelievable” and “disgusting!”

The CEO’s beef was not really with the customer’s message itself, but the fact that Mozilo and other Countrywide executives were receiving–on a daily basis–an avalanche of emails that were similarly worded to the one he had impartial received. Most of the emails were being sent to multiple people in the organization, creating an onslaught of mail that taxed the capacity of the company’s email server.

Much of the text in the customers’ messages was taken from a model form letter published by LoanSafe.org, a website geared to helping vulnerable homeowners negotiate with mortgage lenders, such as Countrywide.

In the email he errantly sent to the troubled homeowner, which was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Mozilo ranted: “This is unbelievable. Most of these letters now have the same wording. Obviously they are being counseled by some other person or by the Internet. Disgusting.”

The recipient of the email, Dan Bailey, wasted no time posting the Countrywide email on mortgage foreclosure websites, according to MSNBC, precipitating a firestorm of reactions.

Mozilo issued the predictable mea culpa statement to the press, as reported in the online mortgage newsletter Housing Wire, stating that he and Countrywide “regret any misunderstanding caused by his inadvertent response… (and that) Countrywide is actively working to help borrowers, like Mr. Bailey, hold their homes.”

Beware of auto-fill

In another email mishap, a man who identified himself as “Aaron” wrote a comment on the New York Times Freakonomics blog about humorous email mistakes, comedically rueing an embarrassing email blunder he had made repeatedly at his workplace—not checking the name in the recipient field generated by his email program’s auto-fill feature.

In his blog comment, Aaron, a gay man with a partner named Mike, shared the story of his mix-up. Aaron worked for a company that had a vice president who was also named Mike. Thus, when Aaron typed “Mike” in the recipient field of his email program, the auto-fill feature of the software completed the name with the last name of the VP instead of that of his partner. “When I first started (working there)… I was constantly sending personal emails to my vice president that were inappropriate and embarrassing,” wrote Aaron. ” I never sent anything salacious but more like, “Hey Pumpkin! What’s for dinner? Do you want to go to the movies on Friday? ” Luckily, the VP Mike had a really good sense of humor….”

Typo troubles

Perhaps one of the funnier stories about email mistakes, relayed on the humor website That Was Amusing, is actually a fictitious joke about a husband who flew from snowy Chicago to sunny Florida for vacation. He was eagerly awaiting the arrival of his wife who was on a business trip and planned to meet him at the hotel the next day. The husband decided to send her a quick email; however, in his run to head down to the pool, he carelessly mistyped her name in the recipient field. Instead of his wife, the message was received by the elderly widow of a preacher, whose email address was just one letter different from that of his wife’s.

The widow, whose husband had died just the day before, practically fainted when she read the misguided message:

“Dearest Wife, Just got checked in. Everything prepared for your arrival tomorrow. P.S. Sure is hot down here.”

While some email mistakes can be comical or ironic, others can be costly or embarrassing. So, whether you’re prone to hitting reply instead of forward, allowing your auto-fill to generate your email recipient’s name, or carelessly misspelling people’s names, it pays to spend an extra second to double check the name in the recipient field every time you send an email.

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