If they don't reply, what does it say about them?

[knightmare]

OK, I'm new here and this is my first new post so please bear with me .

We've sent off several eMails to people on Swing Lifestyle expressing interest. A few select couples have read the eMails but not responded at all. Our understanding is that it is considered rude to just leave people "hanging" :rollseyes like that. We would certainly understand if we got back even a simple "No thanks". After all, not everyone has our good taste but no reply at all we do find annoying.

Questions:

• Do you get this sort of non-response a lot?
• Do you "follow up" with them to let them know the proper etiquette? I ask because it has generally been people who seem to be new to the lifestyle, like us, that we've contacted and not gotten replies from.
• Lastly, does the fact that they can't take 30 seconds to write back say something about them that should throw up a red flag?

[Spoomonkey]

Originally Posted by knightmare

Questions:

• Do you get this sort of non-response a lot?

We rarely get this - and we rarely give it. BUT, I am well aware that we are the exception and are due to go through a dry spell - or shall we call it "the valley of rudeness."

Originally Posted by knightmare

• Do you "follow up" with them to let them know the proper etiquette? I ask because it has generally been people who seem to be new to the lifestyle, like us, that we've contacted and not gotten replies from.

I wouldn't. I am not sure there is any reason to persue them. It should be common sense that a quick answer is better than no answer - and it may be that they are still discussing things. My guess is that people who don't answer are either not real (ie. a husband who HOPES his wife would do this, or a couple who thought they'd do it and just can't bring themselves to). Either way, I would just keep looking. Don't rubber neck the car wrecks - people without the character and coutesy to write back aren't worth the time you're investing in them.

Originally Posted by knightmare

• Lastly, does the fact that they can't take 30 seconds to write back say something about them that should throw up a red flag?

They don't even need 30 seconds. The "sorry, not interested" button has worked well for us when we don't know what to say. I would say it isn't so much a red flag as they just aren't worth your time.

Inconsiderate people exist...

And it is their loss - not yours.

You'll find some great couples eventually.



Spoomonkey

[CB_n_Red]

We find ourselves annoyed by a similar thing - when you've exchanged a few messages with a couple and then they stop responding. No "thanks but no thanks" message (we'd rather get those than be left hanging), just silence. Very irritating! But we agree with Spoomonkey - no point in pursuing it.

We've even been in the situation where we have been in phone contact, all four have spoken and all seems well, then suddenly they vanish. As Spoo suggests, these are probably fakes, picture collectors and time wasters, so we don't worry about it.

Must say, when we do receive the "thanks but no thanks" message we do respond to that, thanking them for taking the trouble. We hope it promotes the right behaviour!

[TNT]

Originally Posted by knightmare

Questions:

• Do you get this sort of non-response a lot?

• Yes, but it does not bother us at all. No response usually means not interested to us, so we just move on.
  
  

  Do you "follow up" with them to let them know the proper etiquette? I ask because it has generally been people who seem to be new to the lifestyle, like us, that we've contacted and not gotten replies from.

  Nope...see response above.
  
  
  

  Lastly, does the fact that they can't take 30 seconds to write back say something about them that should throw up a red flag?

Well, like I said, no response to us means not interested.

There could also be numerous reasons why they have not responded.

I know that I always try and send some type of response, but sometimes I just don't get around to it. I rarely send out a response unless Ted has also read the mail we have received. Sometimes this can take a few days for him to get around to reading and then we will discuss our reponse. Life does get in the way sometimes and there have been times I have clicked on a response from an ad, wanted to respond, but only have time to read and not respond because I either had leave to do something, one of the kids started hollering or someone walked into the house...by the time I get back to the mail sometimes days have passed.

Of course there are times when the mail does not deserve a response at all...i.e. a single man will send a dick pic and ask If I would like some of this...now depending on what type of mood I am in I will either ignore and delete or I will send a smart-ass response

You never really know why someone does not respond. If it is someone you are really interested in, give it a few months and try again. It takes most people a while to learn what to say...be it a negative or positive reply. Yes it is good manners to send a reply to all mail, but sometimes life just dosen't allow the time to do so.

Teresa

[Handyman69]

Another thing to remember about hearing back from couples/profiles.......theres a lot of profiles made out by 1/2 of the party in hopes of persuading the other 1/2 to get more interested. As of the time you replied to them they were still hoping and not ready yet...........this is a crappy way to be.
John

[fun_pairTX]

We don't sweat non-replies at all. We do get them occasionally and we mark them up as not interested and/or rude/classless, needless to say we don't need any of the above .............

[2New2it]

We have always diligent about returning mail, but have stopped being so considerate lately.

My wife has a few very specific demands that include no facial hair, he must have hair on his head, he must be taller than her 5'9" and he must be no older than 45. Recently, we have gotten responses from men who were as short as 5'4", many had facial hair or beards (it's neatly trimmed, is that a problem?) and from a 71 year old who was certain he was the perfect match. One man was 61 years old, bald with a beard and 5'7" and he thought he fit her criteria. I wrote back and asked if he had even read our profile. He admitted he hadn't, but had looked at our ages and thought he would be okay.

If they don't have the courtesy to read our profile before writing, I'm not going to waste my time answering their mail.

[JustAskJulie]

Originally Posted by TNT

Yes, but it does not bother us at all. No response usually means not interested to us, so we just move on.

What Teresa said!

And also a little of what 2New2It said. If you are getting a large majority of non-responses, then you really might want to go back and look at their ad again. See if there is something there you are missing.... something that said "we aren't interested in you". If they basically made that clear in their ad then why should they take the time to respond again to say it? I have non-ads on a few sites that were only posted to test their system before I opted to promote them. The ads typically say that or in some cases they don't say anything at all. And I will still get responses who look at the location, see that it is near them and then reply anyway.

Another thing to look at is your response. Did you take the time to write out what you guys are interested in? Mention what is was in their ad that caught your eyes? I've seen way too many replies to ads that are like "we're interested, check our profile and get back to us". If that's all the response I get, then I'm probably not even going to look at your profile.

[sensuality]

This happened to us when we first made a profile...there were a couple of couples we were interested in...but they just never responded...Their loss Now, we've run into people who just by seeing our pics,write to us.And, we can tell they haven't read the WHOLE profile...so we get excited and think finally{hopefully} we've found someone,cross our fingers and ask them to please go back and read the whole profile...this usually involves smokers{we've politely asked anyone who smokes to refrain from it in our company}Well, as you can imagine this request often times pisses people off.But, hey...read the whole friggin' profile Needless to say,we're beginning to think the whole Swing Lifestyle idea may have been a waste of our time.We'll probably give it a few more months and if we don't get a match...just delete the whole profile. No matter what the attraction if there is one or not,we ALWAYS respond to e-mails!Some people are just plain rude,regardless.The conclusion I've {female member} come to is to just go to swinger's clubs...even if there's no interaction between us and someone else...there's a lot of eye candy;-) facelick

[wildchld97]

Ok. I admit. I'm guilty as charged for not even taking the time to hit the "sorry no thanks button" on two occasions. The one message simply said "Hey..you're hot..does hubby have to be involved?" The other was a one liner that said "Hi..check our profile and get back to us."

Sorry. Neither one of them had the decency to check our profile (which ISN'T wildchld97 by the way in case you're wondering...because someone already had that ID...grrr) so therefore I didn't think that neither one of them even deserved to have a polite response. I'm not losing sleep over it.

In other cases I have delayed *sending* a response simply because I've been too busy to check the new emails immediately. If the couple isn't what we're looking for, I will tell them honestly in a reply. I don't use the "no thanks" button at all. If your email is well written and polite, I will return the same in kind.

I wouldn't sweat it. If you're not getting even a "no thanks" quick response back...you might ask yourself what you're writing to *them*. If you've determined that it's not your fault..that you've honestly checked their profile and thought that they were a good match *and* written a polite well thought email...then screw them. Move on and don't give it a second thought. There are plenty more of us out there that have manners to play with.

[BodyScape02]

We use Swing Lifestyle as our primary means of meeting people outside of attending clubs. We do get a lot of mail; mainly due to our photos I am sure. We try to respond to each piece when we have time. There have been a few occasions where a piece of mail gets “lost in the shuffle” and we don’t get around to it until one of us takes the time to go through it all later on.

It’s always amazing to us how many one-line messages we get from profiles that are almost blank information wise and with no photos asking if we can meet. We also get a lot of messages that are not even sentences with phone numbers for us to call.

There are a lot of people we’ve corresponded with over the past two years but never seem to find the time to meet. We would love to be able to meet everyone but it’s simply impossible to schedule that many dates and still have a “regular life.” LOL

If there is one type of mail we will not bother replying to it’s the mail we get asking WHY we have declined to meet someone. When we turn down invites, we are very polite but do not feel the need to have to explain our decision.

Another are the repeat mailers, who time after time send the SAME message inviting us out to dinner even after we turn them down each time…

The “No Means No” rule just doesn’t seem to be a rule for everyone.

~D2

[knightmare]

Originally Posted by wildchld97

If you're not getting even a "no thanks" quick response back...you might ask yourself what you're writing to *them*.

Here's one example of what we sent as an initial message...

Hi! Saw your profile and thought to introduce ourselves. We are a happily married couple who is brand new to this. We aren't yet sure where we want to take this but do know that discretion and safety are absolute musts. We, too, want to take things slowly and get to know prospective playmates before anything more so we completely understand where you guys are coming from. Please check out our profile and send us an eMail if you're interested in possibly exploring more.

I would hope that would rate at least a quick reply.


Thanks all for your responses. We're not gonna lose any sleep over this believe me. (Much better things to do in bed than sleep anyway ). We were just curious if it was something we did/didn't do or common and I think it is the latter. Besides, we did get a nice reply from another new couple this morning so we'll have to see.

[frenzb4sex]

Keep in mind that, a lot of times, people won't respond until both people have read the email and profile and then make a decision. Yes, we've had it happen to us, but then there was the time out of the blue we got an email from them telling us sorry about not getting back to us, that the husband had been away on business for 2 weeks. Another one emailed us almost a month later and said they had talked about it but had been so busy that they simply forgot about it. While it's nice to be able to reply within the day you get it, the reality is sometimes that's just not possible. Don't read into it too much. It happens, it's just part of the lifestyle.

Responding back as far as etiquette goes to another person is, in my mind, very rude. If there was any doubt that they were going to meet you, you would have sealed your doom at that point. Just let it go.

Tim

[Elusive BiFem]

Say, knightmare...let me add something that may or may not have a thing to do with it. All the other posts are right on target, but I wanted to offer a personal observation, if you will.

Your nickname. Now it may not be the same on Swing Lifestyle and that would negate my entire thought process, but when I first saw this thread started by "knightmare" my most immediate thought was to ignore the entire thing. The word nightmare (knightmare) conjurs up bad and evil thoughts for me ...things I would prefer to ignore. The association...you know? That knee-jerk reaction to a word that isn't normally thought of as pleasant.

I really hope this doesn't offend you as that certainly is not my intent. Just an observation. If this is your name of the ad site, you might want to consider a change to something more "user friendly."

And now a hardy welcome to the board from Texas!!

- EBF

[knightmare]

Originally Posted by Elusive BiFem

I really hope this doesn't offend you as that certainly is not my intent. Just an observation. If this is your name of the ad site, you might want to consider a change to something more "user friendly."

Offended? On the contrary, I appreciate the observation . I honestly hadn't considered that. The monicker came from a shortening of "KnightmareChess" which was a handle I used when gaming on various sites. The implied intimidation for chess is a good thing but I didn't consider how it might be taken in this context. (Unless, of course, the reader is into BDSM ) It was just easy to remember but I will consider changing it if I can do so w/o major headaches. (Interestingly enough, Julie commented on the name when I posted in the "Introduction" thread but it didn't strike me that the name was potentially problematic. Just my thick head I guess head bang ). I guess I don't really attach much to people's screen names or avatars but I can see where some might. Thanks for the observation.