Sunday, April 11, 2010

Get Me A Doctor! Spam!!

Spam.  Most of it today is irrelevant as any credible email client will filter it all away... but in the UAE, you get a new invention:  Mobile Spam.

Yes, you get - daily - spam to your mobile phone in SMS format.  Just now, I have been sent a text message.  Answering the beep at work, hoping it would be Niki sending me good news, I get the message that Dr's Ahmed and Wasima are Orthopedic Surgeons and Endocrinologists respectively and that they are available for consultation in Dubai if I call the number below.

Wow... Dr's are now spamming people randomly in the hope that you're sick and you need their specialty treatment services!  Wonder what the hit rate is?

At work, we now play Spam bingo.  We sit there and someone's mobile will beep.  Normally you would be polite and ignore it as you talk to the person at the table whom you're having the meeting with, but now the phone is grabbed and checked in case its a spam.  "YES!  Its Babyshop telling me that they have 20% this weekend!!"  OR "Yes!!  I can buy one and get one free at an Indian restaurant in Dubai!!".

Advertising is big business here in the UAE, but its as if the marketing people have come straight from 1990 and believe that SMS text messaging is the new cutting edge and that people would REALLY appreciate you flogging their products on their mobiles.  Gold Star for that idea!!

On the flipside though, Hertz rent a car keep sending me emails re their new deals and still no one is picking up the phone!

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