hey.

Most of the time, I wear the big bold bead earrings that I make myself. I have at least one pair in each of the colours that I wear (all right, it is a fairly limited palette so that I don't have to have too many clothes - most of my clothes go with most of my other clothes). But every so often I prefer to wear a pair of gold sleeper hoops, these occasions mainly being SCA events where I'm away from home and I don't know whether there is going to be a convenient mirror. (Unlike some people, I am quite incapable of putting my earrings in without one.) I can't sleep in the big bead earrings, but I can in the sleeper hoops; I can just put those in before I leave the flat and then not even have to think about them till I get home. I prefer them to be about 15 mm in diameter, so that the base hangs below my earlobe but they're not too big; the Creole style looks awesome on a lot of people but it's not really me.

The only problem is, my current pair of gold sleeper hoops is no longer wearable because it's so badly tarnished; this is a bit of a puzzle, because all the other earrings I've had from the same place are still looking fine. It's not even as if I've worn them a great deal. So they need replacing, and obviously I need to look somewhere else for that.

There is a certain company - let us call them X Jewellery - who make very good earrings. They're hypoallergenic to a very high standard; while I'm all right with regular hypoallergenic (I have a nickel allergy but I don't have a problem with any other metals), these ones work for people who usually can't wear earrings at all. They're also highly tarnish-resistant and very good value. So you might think I'd go straight to them, except... there is a bit of a problem.

It's their marketing. They were all right at first; I dealt with them for a few months, had maybe three or four pairs of excellent earrings from them, all fine and dandy. But then they started to introduce some very intrusive new marketing practices. All of a sudden, I couldn't so much as look at anything on their site without getting an e-mail shortly afterwards strongly implying that I "forgot" to buy the item in question. (No. I did not forget. I chose not to, and the subsequent e-mail made me feel even less inclined to buy it.) At about the same time, they also started getting very over-familiar in their marketing e-mails, starting with something like "hey bestie!". No. I'm not your best friend. You don't even know me. I'm one of your customers, and probably not for long at that.

I complained but it didn't do any good, so I unsubscribed from their website and their mailing list and sent them a polite but firm e-mail telling them exactly why they'd just lost a previously happy customer. So now, although I know they sell good products, I was very hesitant about going back there, and I was pretty sure I was going to give them a different e-mail address if I did (and one I could easily block them on if I needed to, at that). I had a good look elsewhere, but the only pair I could find that was likely to be equally reliable was more expensive. Cheap pairs of gold-finish hoops that size are easy to find, but I do need something a bit better, because otherwise if they're going to keep tarnishing like that it's a false economy (basically, it's the Vimes boots thing).

So, very reluctantly, I crept back onto the X Jewellery website, where I found that the size I wanted was out of stock (it generally is, as that style always sells out very fast). Using the safe e-mail address, I signed up for a notification to let me know when it was back in stock. They tried to get me to sign up for everything else, and I went... nope. Not doing that. Not the website, not the mailing list. I just want the notification, and when it comes in I'll just buy the dratted earrings and run.

Given the fact that I had specifically not signed up for the mailing list, you would think, wouldn't you, that I would not then get a marketing e-mail a few days later? Well, you would if we weren't talking about this particular company. Needless to say, I did. I immediately unsubscribed from the mailing list, and for a while I thought no more of it apart from "how annoying, they're still at it", but then a little later it occurred to me that in unsubscribing from the mailing list I hadn't signed up for in the first place, I might also have lost my stock notification. So I e-mailed them to explain what had happened and enquire whether or not this was the case. I was perfectly fair about it. I said that if my stock notification was still live, I'd be happy to buy the earrings from them; but if I couldn't have a stock notification without being on the mailing list, I was not going to sign up for another one and I would be going elsewhere.

They have not yet replied; and if they haven't by this afternoon, I shall indeed be going elsewhere. Sorry not sorry... "bestie".