My reaction entirely. I wouldn't want to build my business up on these types of customers, because as quick as they left X and came to you, they'll leave you as well.

Not to say that you shouldn't do your best to make sure your customers are always able to continue business, but like you said, everyone has their bad days. I'd choose to have loyal customers that aren't jumping on social media at the drop of a hat and publicly "chastising" the company.

* Also, "I'd love to speak to you more about the issues you're experiencing" does not mean "offer to help fix the problem" as he mentioned. Unless he means, leave his current provider to move to them.

If your hosting provider is cheap, then that's one reason for why they might provide bad service. You get what you pay for in general. Or in other words, changing one cheap hosting provider for another won't help with reliability much.

Fair point, although one could argue that its situations like these that are potentially most likely to make you reassess how much you want to spend on hosting - these guys are actually more expensive.

It's also literally spam - unsolicited advertisement.

Is it unsolicited when you post your issue on a public medium for all the world to see? I consider any such public announcement a direct request for the target's response and an indirect request for the public's response.

On that medium, yes. By email, no. Every tweet I post is not an invitation to the world to send me promotional emails.

This is not spam by the US definition. It is by some European countries, though.

What is spam by the US definition?

I agree with this site about it: https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

The key here would be unsolicited (yes) and bulk (possibly no). It is impossible to tell based on the blog post, but I find it less likely that there was a bot designed to find customers after a rival outage than a human doing it. If there was a bot however, that would be spam.

I think many people on here would agree that it is annoying and would probably be ignored or marked as spam, but I don't think it is spam.

It is definitely spam in other countries, though, where the criteria is unsolicited.

I don't agree with labeling as spam only messages sent in bulk.

The flaw in this definition is that the recipient has no way to tell whether a message was sent in bulk or not. After all, if spammers have a database with your address in it, they can have your name as well, or they can guess it from the email address and thus personalize the email you receive. And if the recipient can't tell whether a message was sent in bulk or not, then guilt can't be easily established, requiring a costly investigation from competent authorities.

The problem with email is that it's very cheap to send, much cheaper than making phone calls and the problem with spam is that if unaddressed, it renders your email address unusable, with important, legitimate email being lost in noise, so it does have a high cost for recipients. And that cost for recipients is the same, whether those emails where sent in bulk or not.

So you see, such a rule is designed to protect spammers, to shield them from legal liability.

Perhaps not bulk, but dehumanised emails? I don't mind receiving "cold-calling" personal unsolicited comms, if it's specific to me. Quite often I get something interested from someone reaching out, and certainly wouldn't classify that kind of activity as spam.

Something can be bulk and spam without being automated.

Ambulance chasing would count as hustling.