Yex

I have just received an e-mail from the lovely people at BPM. This was both unrequested and unnecessary. I was under the impression that it had been made perfectly clear that advertisers on the BBS would not undetake this type of cold calling, and that any new products available would appear in the necessary section for members to read.

I also remember that BPM said that they would arrange for one of their products to be available at a reduced price on a regular basis - have not seen any evidence of this as yet, but with the history of BPM on the Scoobynet what else can I expect.

I would appreciate other users comments as to the acceptance of such marketing techniques, as I for one do not appreciate this method of advertising. If I want a product I visit the websites of suppliers showing on the banners at the top of the page.

To quote Firefox I am VERY ANNOYED about this and would like to see it stopped before it gets out of hand.

Yex

Ian Cook

As has been said before, we have not provided anybodies email addresses or details to any of the advertisers on the BBS in the form of a mailing list in any shape or form whatsoever. They must have got your address from your profile, or another means. Definitely not from us though.

I have heard of several other people getting this approach, and i dont agree with it, unfortunately theres not much you can do about it

AlexM

I got one too....

The recipient was displayed via Outlook as 'undisclosed recipients'. I'm not sure if this is an attribute of Outlook because I've never been BCC'd, or a forged email header as you would normally receive from spammers.

I'm not too worried about this because I know who the originator is, but I'd rather not receive unsolicited product announcements. As Yex mentions, there is a forum for this on the BBS, so I'd rather be in control about what I do or don't choose to read.

I'm sure Greg would prefer us to not set up autofilters which move BPM mails to the Deleted Items folder (hint hint Greg!)

Cheers,

Alex

Paul Frank

Yex

The BPM junk email hit me too

BUT unfortunately for BPM they've fallen into my anti-SPAM trap

It is for this reason that I only advertise a hotmail account - not my real one!

Now I've blocked them from my hotmail account, so if I wanted email them about buying something from them . . . well now I won't get the reply.

So I won't.

Not good business I'd suggest - anyway it's their loss!

Paul

JohnS

iTrader: (1)

Why not simply reply to Greg and ask him to remove you from his mailing list ?

We've just had a discussion about this latest e-mail on I-Chat, and Greg happily removed the person from his list.

My guess is that if you have ever e-mailed Greg@BPM with a question/price request etc, then you will end up on their mailing list ?

AlexM

JohnS,

You're right, but I'm not really that hyper sensitive about receiving product info if it is relevent, and as you point out, I'm on their DL as a result of requesting information from them.

Some people certainly will resent it though.

Cheers,

Alex

Paul Frank

John,

I hear what you say but the word "ASK" is missing here . . . Pete C's example is what I consider is good practice - you chose to be added to his list - not too difficult a concept!

At home I try to fight the wave of junk mail (& not 'cos I'm a tree hugger - I drive a Scooby remember!)

My time is too much in demand to read junk emails - hence I use hotmail as a block (a use for Microsoft at last eh?)
Even though I'm OK it still doesn't mean I'm happy.

I really do hope BPM aren't trawling ScoobyNet for email addresses – if so I think most people would expect some action? (difficult to do I know because of free access)
Anyway time will tell.

Paul

Yex

John,

Still not happy about this, but just my point of view before people go off on a tangent

I have never contacted BPM in any way and the only way they could have sent me the mail the way they did was to copy my information from my profile sheet. This is where my point is hopefully seen. They probably did this for a lot of Scoobynet users (if not all) and that, I believe, is against the spirit of the BBS. If people want information on products for their car they can access the websites advertised, I don't want to receive "junk" mail from 3rd party suppliers.

The more established after market companies use the BBS to advertise their products and are also good enough to provide answers to technical questions as and when they come along. This process has worked successfully since the advertising banners were put in place, I do not see why BPM have to carry on the way they have.

Yex - now off soap box

[This message has been edited by Yex (edited 01-02-2000).]

Ian Cook

I havent received any of these mails lately, and dont appreciate them if i do.

One suggestion you can do is to go into your profile and turn off the show email address option ? a bit late now as they have already got your address, but thats all i can suggest. Theres not a great deal we can do about it, like i said before i dont agree at all with this sort of tactic, but the main thing you can do is mail Greg and ask him not to send you anymore unsolicited emails.

pwebb

can't believe people are getting so worked up about 1 e-mail when they happily wade through acres of drivel on this bbs :-)

if you don't want unsolicited e-mail - don't disclose your address anywhere or use a free ISP's mail server instead - there are plenty of 'em out there! - simple!

Paul W

Paul Frank

Nick

I agree with you. I get a lot of very, very important emails everyday - SPAM is a bloody nuisance.

The only reason I didn't use an anti-SPAM neutron bomb (like you suggested) on BPM was because they support the BBS.
Just blocking them seemed the best way.

If others do it - well they're fair game I think!

Paul

Nick

Junk email is against the rules of every ISP I know. Complain to the offender's ISP & if the spammer uses a real email reply-to, take the opportunity of sending them a rather large amount of attachments.
I have a nice system where I can redirect all spam email to a particular email address. If BPM ever spammed me, their mailbox would become rather more active than they expected.(Grrr)

ROSS

Why such a strong reaction ? I get junk e-mail all the time I've come to expect it , we can all set up filters etc and if you use hotmail as many do then , So what! it is a free service,do you write to the press about unwanted advertising coming through your letter box? far more annoying to me! as I tend to waste time looking through it before I bin it and wave more trees goodbye. Just press delete and forget it.
Dont get me wrong I dont approve and Greg should stop , but I do suspect this is more BPM hysteria ; Don't forget Greg is advertising here and thus paying for and supporting this BBS . Try and remember that as well.

Nightmare

If you do decisde on the 'large attachment' revenge method, make sure you're 100% correct. I got sent one (3.4Mb) recently in revenge for me hacking onto their machine. Only thing was, the e-mail address he should have sent to was Knightmare@..... not nightmare.

I wasnt amused, though an apology was immediately forthcoming once I threatened imminenet maiming....

Paul Frank

NM

Well 3.4Mb wouldn't bother me (with our pipe) – “reply with history” works fine for me!

HOWEVER I notice you don't disclose your own email address though? hmm

And I still stand by what I say - spoof email addresses work fine! (also they work on recruitment agencies as well) (sorry Mr Chaplin)

Paul

MarkO

I received the junk too, and as John mentioned I immediately responded by posting a response to the mail (along with suitable ridiculing comments) to I-chat . Greg soon got the message and has (I've been told) removed me from the mailing list. My annoyance was increased by the fact that I think I was on the 'early' version of the list and had already recieved a mailing before - to which I had immediately responded by asking Greg to remove me.

I think this is just another example of Greg's complete inability to understand marketing, what works and what doesn't. Despite all his claims during the original 'BPM ad-war' on this BBS, he seems to have failed to learn anything from the incident.

I think the saddest thing was that the mail didn't even have interesting content - even for a scoob addict like myself. Just some dross about a tail-pipe or something.

Oh well, perhaps one day he'll learn....

DAZ

i dont mind having emails off people to do with scoobys.

the more info i get the more choice i have

at the end of the day if you dont want to read it then just delete it.

cheers

daz

bob

How come I never had email from Greg.
Come on Greg where is mine.