How Gleneagles Intan Hospital Deal With Spam Mail

I once received a forwarded email about some poison perfume sample which caused the death of seven women upon inhalation and exposure. It was purportedly sent by a person who claimed to be an employee of Gleneagles Hospital Limited, on behalf of the hospital, in order to warn the public as these seven women were supposedly admitted and treated at Gleneagles Hospital.

How does a PR person deal with such hoax and spam? Apparently, the hoax did not end at emails but also in SMS. Apparently, the PR arm of this hospital had been proactive and well-versed on crisis management and proceeded to set up a webpage on its main domain to explain itself and the hoax. Showing its concern, the hospital wrote:

We understand the panic and mystification that this email has caused and the public's need to seek verification and consolation from a reliable medical institution such as ours. Thus, we would like to highlight that we have never admitted or treated such patients and have never been aware of such incidences. We would also like to categorically state that this email did not originate from our Hospital and / or any of our employees, current or otherwise. In addition, we declare that no one was ever at any time commissioned or authorised by the Hospital to deliver and circulate such warnings. Further to this, we would also like to point out that our registered company name is Gleneagles Hospital (Kuala Lumpur) Sdn. Bhd. (Co. No. 198498-T) and we were never at any point known as Gleneagles Hospital Limited as claimed in the email.

If you like to read more, go to Gleneagles website.

Another bigger company than Gleneagles, Petronas, seemed to have adopted a silent stand over the phone scam that has been circulating like Urban Legend. This site, which was alerted by the scam a year ago, decided to post the message of the spam here.



And because of that, many other phone owners - as far as those in Singapore - have written in here to comment and voice their displeasure. Petronas has a Scam Notice on recruitment here but unfortunately the company did not include the phone SMS scam, which I believe is doing more damage to the national oil producer's image.

This is not good for public relations and the faster Petronas's public relations department do something to control the damage the scam is doing to its image (not to mention gullible phone users), the better.