Addressing unknown people in business

Grantanow

Utterly trivial.

But it's an odd way to address someone in a business letter.

Dear Smith (or Jones)

I'd be suspicious thst it was a scam.

It annoys me that the Tesco self scanner pings up with my first name ...

I gave my email address to Holland & Barret and they address me in their “offers” by just my surname.
Better than the new habit of tv licensing of addressing me as Miss. Aaaaagh!

Also they have changed their bank details and started to email a monthly reminder to make sure there are “sufficient funds” to pay the instalments! Odd.

Sounds perfectly fine, exact and proper email ettiquette to me. It is considered kind, not rude.

They would have to ask you how you would like to be addressed with another email and that seems a waste of time. It doesnt matter what you're called in business. It matters that you get the business done.

I do have a problem when sending emails to a company (when I don't have a named contact). "Dear Sirs" seems overly formal for an email (and also sexist), "Hi" or "Hello" too informal.

I usually start an email communication to a business with "Good morning" or "Good afternoon," and finish with "Kind regards."

V3ra - that is what I do too.

eazybee

I do have a problem with people using my first name without permission. It presupposes a familiarity which does not exist.

How I agree. I feel that at my great age, I have earned the right for some deference, and if asked, I always say I prefer being Mrs. Surname.

You’ll probably find the company is using a template and generate the same standard letter to lots of people and the template will have been set up to select the first name. It happens more often if the company uses an offshore company as different countries have different ways to address people

It's your name, what's the problem?

Exactly!

I get miffed if I am addressed as Miss Surname. They obviously haven’t done enough research to see I am married. A very young female till operator called me ‘my lovely’ the other day. Now that is weird. I don’t live in Bristol.

They must be thinking your surname is your name, and they are trying to be informal.

I don't mind people calling me by first name, they usually ask first and I tell them to use the much abbreviated name I prefer. My dad was called Arthur David + family name but always called David or Dave; it infuriated me when hospital staff called him Arthur, without checking first, I kept wondering who they were talking about - as did he.

I had cause to write a letter of complaint to a quite large company recently and was a bit taken back to receive a very sincere apology addressed to Dear Christian name 😲 I checked to make sure how I had signed my letter and according to my old secretarial training had started with Dear Sir and signed Yours faithfully (Mrs) Christian Name, Surname. I was not impressed but did accept it at the time and had a right good moan about modern methods. I still dont think it was good manners, it should have been Mrs Surname.

I so agree with Eazybee and GrandMattie. A GP was most annoyed when I called him Gerald - no Doctor or Sullivan. My response "So now you know how disrespectful it feels. You only had to ask my preference". (Dr Sullivan is not his real name). We have since agreed to be formal.

I agree it's a very strange way for a business to address a person and have never come across it before. I would guess it's either a foreign person sending the email or someone unused to sending business messages.
I actually don't mind people addressing me by my first name even in a business setting, don't really care so long as spelled correctly.

Sadly the traditional formal salutations are no longer followed on correspondence by a growing number of companies along with punctuation, paragraphing and capital letters, which leads to overfamiliarity, I also think that emails over letters have developed and perceived as less formal and don’t attract the same rules of correspondence that were instilled in me at school, also I believe that a lot of business emails are actually sent by AI and their algorithms are less than perfect.
The OP mentioned that France have more formality in their business interactions which I can understand as their language and social structure has more definition than English (have been trying to upgrade my school girl French for several years and still struggle)
Bottom line I’m probably a fossil but until I’ve built a relationship with an individual on a business footing I prefer they use my preferred salutation of Mrs

All of you should realize that it is no longer the 1970s. We have a new world, a new generation, and they dont care about previous formalities, etiquette or rules.

Macadia

All of you should realize that it is no longer the 1970s. We have a new world, a new generation, and they dont care about previous formalities, etiquette or rules.

Us fossils still inhabit the earth and should be granted the deference and courtesy we deserve - post 1970s or not!

I don’t care how anyone addresses me first, last or both but Im not a Miss or Mrs (anymore) much prefer first name or both names Dear Suzy Jones

In answer to the first query Dear Jones almost definitly a computer robot based answer

Why have a go at David granmabatty he was only agreeing with nana8 he didn’t really say anything out if turn

I think it's a computer error. It has got your first name and surname in the wrong order from a list. Hello is informal, so I assume the intention was to pick up your first name, but somewhere in the system they have got confused.

Perhaps it is generational, I don't know. I also find it grating and odd for a stranger to assume they can call me by my first name but it seems to be the way things have gone.

When I lived in the US, I noticed that ma'am and sir were used a lot. It did sound disingenuous but has the advantage of avoiding mangling names which aren't pronouncable using English phonetics (such as Welsh and Irish names).

As for titles, it took me a long time to become a Dr and I find it undermining when I'm referred to as Ms or Mrs when my details show I'm a Dr. Once a man is a Dr they don't still refer to him as Mr.
(There's an exception for surgeons www.bmj.com/content/321/7276/1589)

When we go on holiday there's an assumption my husband is the Dr. This happens even when they have our names in front of them. He likes to put them straight (with a laugh and a smile) as he supported me through the exhausting years of training and is proud of my achievements (which is wonderful as my parents didn't see the point in girls being educated after 16). I qualified later in life than usual when we'd saved to afford it.

Bills and businesses change my Dr back to Mrs upteen times. People have been known to chide me as if I should be more proud of being a wife (they'd never do that to a male Dr.) I did no training to be married and don't see it as a career so I think they've missed the point.

When I was travelling alone for work I prefered the ambiguity of Dr. as rightly or wrongly it made me feel a little safer when booking hotels.

Given all the things wrong in the UK (and the world) right now I know my irritations are piffling. However these forums give us the opportunity to focus on tiny aspects of our lives. Some people will ignore posts, some empathise, others sympathise and a few will berate us for daring to voice our thoughts. The way I see it is we get to share our happy moments, woes and advice which that can be good for us in lot of ways.

Medical staff are supposed to ask how you would like to be called.
Thé letters you’re getting sound computer generated.

I'm sorry, but nowhere in commercial business training is it acceptable to call people just by their surname.
Dear Jones is not correct unless your in the forces.

I agree that Client is an appropriate catch all. But can only assume that these companies rely on automated systems that are not up to the job.
It always puts me off dealing with them.

Oh bother, I missed a your/you're