First of all, I have to say that I don’t really like sending or receiving invitations via e-mail for parties. It’s really easy to leave someone out or invite someone you weren’t intending to invite, even if you’re really anal like me and check the e-mail three times before you send it out.
That said, today I received an e-mail invitation from a friend of mine asking me to a party at her house. It was one of those evite thingies, but it was addressed to someone else. So I responded to her, saying something along the lines of “Hey, did you mean to send this to me? Just thought I’d ask in case it didn’t get to the intended recipient.” Or something like that - regardless, it was polite and to the point. Although I didn’t say so, I won’t be offended if the invitation wasn’t directed toward me because it was to a party that would involve watching the upcoming presidential debates, and we’re not close enough that she knows my political affiliation. So it’s no big deal if it was an accident and I’m not invited. But I mentioned it to my sister and she said it was rude to ask if the invitation was supposed to go to me, and I should have just RSVP’d saying I wouldn’t be able to attend. Alternatively, she thinks I should have ignored it, but then the person it was addressed to might never get it.
This is where I have problems - if the invitation hadn’t been directed at me, wouldn’t it be presumptuous to respond to it anyway? And shouldn’t I let her know that it went to the wrong person? My sister seemed to think it was rude because, according to her, now the person who sent me the invitation (whether it was accidental or not) is obligated to invite me because she knows I got the invitation, and I should just politely decline, even if she didn’t intend to invite me. That way she wouldn’t be stuck with the embarrassment of having to tell me she didn’t invite me.
The evite I got had a message above the link to the RSVP form that said, “Hey, [not my name], here’s the updated invitation to our party. We hope you can make it!” It was sent to my email address, but I figured maybe they either forgot to change the name in the message itself, or they entered the wrong address from their address list (which is something I’ve been known to do - click on the wrong one and not even realize it). One way or the other, it’s no biggie - I just figured that either they didn’t know our political affiliation, simply forgot, or just wanted close friends there. We happen to run in the same circles, but we don’t see each other really often. I only heard about the party second-hand on Friday, then got this evite today, which is what made me think that maybe they forgot and someone mentioned it to them, prompting them to send the invitation in haste. Hopefully I’ll find out soon.
I understand your confusion, though - I wasn’t exactly clear.
I think you did the right thing. If you opened snail mail where the envelope was addressed to you but the inside message wasn’t, you’d make an effort to tell the sender so she could get the message to the right person, yes? I should think the same thing would apply for e-mail.
Assuming the sender made a careless mistake, there’d be no reason for them to get an absolute free pass on that. Crashing the party, whining about how you should have been invited, telling the world (that knows the inviter, not just the SDMB), that would have been out of line. If the inviter was careless, he deserves to have to come up with something polite like “thanks for catching my mistake, I’ll be sure to invite you to my next party” or some such.
After all, what if they were changing the date or something and the real invitee shows up 2 days early - he he he
I once got an invitation to a birthday party via snail mail. I had never heard of the guset of honor (a young child), so I called to let the mother know that the invitation had gone astray. She was grateful, as she was wondering why she hadn’t heard from the intended invitee.
You did the right thing. If you had ignored it, the intended recipient might have been taken off an invitation list for non-response. His/her social life could have been ruined forever!
I agree that the OP did the correct thing. But I don’t see how this illustrates the evils of email invitations?
I would far prefer an emailed invitation over snail mail. If you snail mail me an invitation, I have to keep track of the invitation itself. If you email me, I can access it from home, work, a friends. I’m naturally disorganized. To me, email is a blessing.
Sure, I don’t have to keep track of an invitation or pay postage to send them if I use e-mail, but if I send an invitation to the wrong person, I’ve sort of screwed myself over. So, although sending invitations snail-mail often requires more effort, it also is less likely to result in a misdirected invitation (of course, this doesn’t include people who were left out, which is easy to do via e-mail or snail mail, or the odd person who’s moved).
Also, in general, while e-mail makes my life easier, it’s definitely more intrusive than snail mail. I can only check snail mail once a day, but I obsessively check my e-mail a gazillion times a day and respond like Pavlov’s dog every time my e-mail notification dings. It got so bad at one point that I just turned the damn thing off and only allowed myself to check a couple times a day. But then I’d get people calling me saying, “Hey, I sent you an e-mail like 20 minutes ago and you haven’t responded! Did you get it?” Urgh.
Consequently, it turns out that the person who sent the e-mail sent it to numerous people with the same message, and it was automatically dumped into most people’s inboxes because it came from an evite site and was recognized as spam by most people’s computers. I only found this out second-hand - the person who actually sent me the invitation still hasn’t replied. I figure if she decides not to reply, I’ll just give her a call tomorrow to make sure she’s not ticked off or anything. If she is, I’ll try to make nice, but ultimately it’ll be her problem.
oops … sorry it took me so long to respond to this … i just meant i think it’s easier to make mistakes like this with email … and it’s not a very elegant way to send invitations anyway
