Is it rude to send a late night email to a business?

[YellowPolkaDotBikini1980]

Just to clarify I don't mean WhatsApp or text or anything. An actual email.

I was up at 2 am, I remembered something and sent an email. Something along the lines of 'just to confirm the Birthday Cake we ordered has chocolate frosting but is a vanilla flavour cake'.

I just wanted to be clear because in the past, with a different bakery, we had verbally said 'chocolate frosting, vanilla cake' but ended up getting just a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

When picking up the cake, my sister was told 'and by the way, I don't appreciate getting emails at all hours of the night.'

Surely you turn off email notifications for you phone if you don't want to be disturbed. I don't think the Nigerian Princes and the 'Manhood extenders' are waiting for business hours to spam people's inboxes.

AIBU to send emails late at night?

I do think that it’s unreasonable when it’s perfectly easy to schedule your email send time so that it arrives in normal business hours.

You don’t know why the baker keeps email notifications on. You weren’t going to get an answer any earlier than the next working day so why send at 2am for something so non-urgent and essentially trivial?

YANBU. A competent adult can and should set their devices so they’re alerted or not as they choose.
Her response was out of order. I hope you’ve sent or are going to give some robust honest feedback.
As an aside, I really want a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting now 😁

I'd be tempted to email saying pretty much that.

Hi, the cake was lovely, however due to the rudeness shown to my sister I will not be using you again. I suggest you explore ways of managing your emails and notifications rather than shouting at customers.

Not rude at all. Emails are for non urgent non immediate communication and a completely valid way to contact a business out of hours.

I send emails at times which are convenient to me but not to others, I don't expect them to reply immediately. I have seen recently a similar sentence in email signatures at work which os a good thing. It sets out that there isn't an expectation to respond immediately just because you received an email at 4am.

You can't argue with stupid. Of course it's not rude.

The whole point of emails/ text/ whatsapp is to send when convenient, and to read and deal with when convenient!

A phone call, you have to make during reasonable business hours (not at 7am, not after 7pm and so on). Everything else is entirely up to you.

Some people are just lazy or stupid, there's not much you can do. Next they'll be moaning you are sending an email on a bank holiday or a Sunday!

Well, that's a business that I wouldn't be recommending anywhere. Silly response by the owner.

I love this. I don't know if I'm ND or NT, but yes to the fluffy irrelevancies to oil the wheels. I spend ages trying to get those right! :)

Wrt to the email timings, it's really the responsibility of the recipients to choose when to read their emails. It's not ok to decide to read emails at 2 am then complain about it.

I'd only use the scheduling if I didn't want people to know I was up at 2 am.

In this situation, if the changes to the cake had to be made first thing that morning, it's understandable the baker found the short notice difficult and inconsiderate. Otherwise, it's their problem for not turning off email notifications or for checking them at 2 am.

I don't look at the time it was sent
I reply when I'm working
It makes no difference
I think they were rude

Really unprofessional. I would email a helpful instruction about how to silence email notifications if they are linked to a phone. Explain if will help them achieve work life balance whilst maintaining a professional demeanor with clients 😈

So, a whole FOUR DAYS after the 2am mail, she's still annoyed enough to make a snarky comment about it? To a customer? Wow. 'Amanda' really ought to get someone else to handle the client facing part of her business.
You, on the other hand, did nothing unreasonable at all.

YNBU. I wouldn’t be using the business again (unless cake is amazing).

Weird reaction from the business owner. You sent it when you thought about it, it's not like you were expecting an immediate reply

Not rude. I do most of my admin late at night. I remember doing a tribunal for my son and sending the barrister an email at 2am. She messaged straight back and we had a laugh about it.

Even if you do need to keep your phone on all night due to elderly parents/alarm etc, you can set your email notifications so a new email doesn’t ping or make a sound and wake you up. Perhaps send a passive aggressive message explaining this to cake person. At about 3am.

You did nothing wrong. I send emails in the middle of the night if necessary, nobody looks at them until morning - unless they too are night owls and then won't mind but I've not generally had that happen.

Forget it.

I would have thrown the cake back in their face! (The way my hormones are at the moment).

You are not rude at all.
It is up to them to turn off their notifications.

The beauty of email is they can be sent at any time and picked up at any time.

YANBU. What a shame you won't be ordering from them again.

I would have sent it but put it on a time delay, so that it went at 8am or something similar.

I schedule send work emails if I'm working outside work hours. But often with personal emails is as and when I get chance!

We have got this wanky statement on our work emails that say something along the lines of just because im working stupid hours I don't expect you to respond or something along those lines

The Baker is being ridiculous. Turn your notifications off at night if you don’t want notifications at night 🙄 if you’d called her at 2am, I’d get it, but for goodness sake!

Totally agree

"It won't happen again because we won't be ordering from someone who is frankly so rude"

thats a them problem - turn off notifications after say 10pm if they dont want waking etc. Sounds like a microbusiness without proper boundaries in place

I have ADHD and POTS. I forget all the time.

Friggin schedule the email for 7am, you don't have to send it at 2am for goodness sake. I'd be annoyed by that too.

I get texts from my bank at 6am!
I'd send emails late - like you said I'm not expecting a reply or them to see it til the next day!