Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Amateur Hour in FIDE

I don't know if it's the worst FIDE faux pas but this latest is a pretty bad one for a large world organisation. Remember that FIDE newsletter? Well I've just received my first issue, but with it were the names and email addresses of some thirty recipients! The sender, it seems, didn't bother with the blind carbon copy. A very bad case of amateurism in the house of FIDE.

That this is the first issue is no excuse. Even more concerning is that the newsletter is a PDF with no outgoing link to an unsubscribe page or instructions on how to. I'm guessing we're supposed to email the "postmaster" Dr Peter Rajcsanyi who, according to the FIDE site, is the organisation's marketing and PR director.

As for the newsletter itself, it's quite basic. There's a puzzle, a calendar of events, a short player profile (on Judit Polgar) and the usual news. All in two pages. I think the whole thing takes about 30 seconds to read.

Quite frankly, these guys are better off hiring our friend in RP Manny Benitez. Manny's output is way more professional and with a heap more content.

2 comments:

Tom Chivers said...

I quite agree, and I had the same experience. In fact, I had the same experience twice, receiving two copies of the same message, each with a different list of recipients.

Anonymous said...

Me too. I complained.