“Just a moment,” she said. There was a long pause, and then the Haggler wound up in the telecommunication version of oblivion. After another failed attempt or two at an office call, the Haggler started phoning Vocus executives at home, around 8 p.m. But several had numbers that were no longer in service. It was as though these people knew that reporters would someday come looking for them, and they long ago took evasive measures.

Or so it seemed until one evening when the Haggler interrupted the dinner of You Mon Tsang, a senior vice president. Mr. Tsang sounded sincerely apologetic and promised to delete the Haggler from the Vocus database. Within 48 hours, the onslaught of P.R. spam had all but ceased. It was a happy, happy day.

But this one step seemed insufficient. P.R. spam is fed by companies that hire P.R. companies that pay database companies like Vocus, or their handful of competitors. So if you want to focus on root causes, you must ask: Why would any company spend money to blanket reporters with email they didn’t ask for and almost surely don’t want?

The Haggler put this question to Andrew Lazorchak, managing director of Soireehome, the company behind the self-chilling, iceless drinking glass. It was news to him that his company’s public relations firm, Avalon Communications, was spending any part of Soireehome’s $1,500-a-month retainer on spam email. And it was news he didn’t like.

“I’m happy to get this call,” he said. “We don’t know what Avalon does on a day-to-day basis. They just send us a bimonthly report, detailing what they have been able to do for our company.”

Avalon can usually point to one P.R. coup a month, Mr. Lazorchak said, in most cases an appearance in a glossy magazine.

“But they should not be bombarding journalists,” he said. “That’s like fishing with dynamite.”

A great metaphor, except that fishing with dynamite probably yields more bounty than spam emailing, doesn’t it? The Haggler wanted to ask Avalon Communications, which is based in Austin, Tex., but the company did not respond to a phone call, an email or a Facebook message. Ironic, given that it specializes in communicating.