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Circuit City Shares Your Address With Netpliance
An Anonymous Coward writes "People who have recently bought the i-Openers from Circuit City all over US have been receiving a letter from Netpliance (who makes the i-Openers). Circuit City has put it upon themselves to give out the personal information (names, phone numbers and addresses) to Netpliance without the consent of the customers.
The letter
and more information are available at
i-opener-linux.net." I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but it's interesting that a retailer is helping a supplier track down customers. There's also the seemingly-perpetual i-opener issue of tweaking the Terms of Sale, after the sale.
I got the letter from Netpliance, and before I even opened it, I had a pretty good idea what was inside. Sure enough, it was a letter telling me that my I-Opener would be a different model, and that new terms of sale had been imposed.
/. story ran (sometime in March). More amused then frightened, I called up two of my friends who also bought I-Openers and they both got "the letter" as well.
:)
The interesting thing is that the letter is dated April 14, while I bought my I-Opener a week after the
The next day I called up Netpliance, and left a voice mail for the woman who was dealing with this. She gave me a call back about 30 minutes later, and I discussed the letter with her. She said that since I had already purchased my I-Opener, the letter didn't apply to me. Fine by me. I then asked her about my name, address and credit card information.
She told me that Circuit Sh^H^HCity was selling them for Netpliance and that as a reseller, I had actually bought my I-Opener from Netpliance. Aparently I had still given my credit card to CC because she claimed that they didn't have that, only my name and address.
A couple interesting points:
A friend of mine who put down his money for an I-Opener, and then cancelled got the letter too. He cancelled his order after 4 weeks, and finding out that CC had been selling the stock they got in on the floor, without saving stock for people who had already put their money down.
This is a good reason to get a credit card. I've got a debit card, so if they decide to pull $500 out of my account for not using their ISP, I'll be in big trouble. My bank also won't let me block individual companies from making charges to the debit card. What was that Linux credit card again?
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
This is absolutely deplorable. Hook the customers, cancel the line containing the product they bought (bait and switch), and then offer a "new, improved" version -- that just happens to come with a monthly service fee. This is disgusting. Even Microsoft isn't this sneaky.
darren
Cthulhu for President!
(darren)
Send back their letter (in shreded, of course) in the reply envelope that they so graciously provided. Include an additional letter to the effect that:
"By opening this envelope, you agree to pay me $40 a month in perpetuity for the service of proofreading your letter. Additionally, you must give me your first born child and a selected blood sacrifice of your choice.
Thank you for your business."
There may be backstory behind why the model was discontinued, but I don't see that as a YRO issue.
Circuit City has put it upon themselves to give out the personal information (names, phone numbers and addresses) to Netpliance without the consent of the customers ..[snip].. I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but it's interesting that a retailer is helping a supplier track down customers.
I don't see how this is any different from Circuit City and Maytag contacting customers who placed an order for a dishwasher that (for whatever reason) they could not then deliver. If Circuit City didn't help Netpliance track down their customers, then it would be more of a story. If Circuit City simply sent the 'new' Netpliance units and had people stuck with the service agreement without notice, then there would be a story here.
Circuit City has done some stupid things in its day, and I am no fan of theirs, but this isn't anything sinister. It looks to me like they may actually be trying to do something good for once.