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eBay : Where "Opt-out" Means "Keep Trying"
<Quoted letter follows>
Dear cadrys,
Several times a month, eBay sends out valuable email communications with news, offers and special events that help you buy and sell. Unfortunately, we have noticed that an error occurred during your registration process that prevented you from receiving these communications. Many of your Notification Preference defaults were set to "no" rather than to "yes", which means that unlike other eBay members, you're not receiving these types of communications.
We'd like to resolve this problem quickly and efficiently. Therefore, on 1/8/01, we returned all your Notification Preferences to the standard default of "yes" to put you in line with the rest of the eBay community. However, we want you to choose your Notification Preferences rather than rely on our standard defaults and will therefore not include you in any communications until 1/23/01. This will provide you with some time to evaluate these choices and modify your Notification Preferences. You will, however, continue to receive certain administrative emails that are part of executing your eBay transactions.
<Quote ends>"
01/07/01
Dear Floridian Voter,
Every four years, the Government holds an election. Unfortunately, we at the Democratic Party have noticed that an error occurred during your voting process which may have prevented you from voting Democrat. Your Voting Preference was "Republican" rather than "Democrat", which means that Al Gore was not receiving your vote.
We'd like to resolve this problem quickly and efficiently. Therefore, on 11/8/00, we began reinterpreting all your Voting Preferences to the standard default of "Democrat" to put you in line with the rest of our community.
However, we want you to choose your Voting Preferences rather than rely on our standard defaults and will therefore not include you in any communications until the next election. This will provide you with some time to evaluate these choices and modify your Voting Preferences. Your November Vote will, however, continue to be counted for Al Gore in our continuing recount effort.
Not me. The cost-value ratio of selling stuff on eBay still continues to be the best I've ever seen. I've reached dozens of buyers for used computer equipment easily and cheaply.
You have to the weigh the sheer convenience of getting good money for your stuff (without going through a middleman) vs. a single irritating email. If their service is strong enough, which it is, I can let this one go.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Yes, Your Honor, She said "NO!" to all my come-ons.
But most of the other girls I have asked have said YES, so her answer MUST have been an error.
So I just put her in line with the rest of the community...and well, you know
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
This is kind of like when that Hot Babe opts out of a torrid sexual encounter at your place. You wait five minutes, quaff another brewsky, and ask again.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
For one thing, people, especially geeks, are extremely loath to admit their own powerlessness and inefficacy in a situation. Even the passing gesture of non-consumption, as inauthentic and short-lived as it is, seems like a response of some sort. The fact that most of us are essentially at the whim of the big players of the system in which we choose to participate is an uncomfortable one.
The second reason is political - the libertarian credo is that the market will resolve all such behaviors. Admitting that the market couldn't do so in any given situation would be a sort of sacrilige, and could lead to such horrors as the European privacy legislations, trade practice controls and other frightening instances of useful public policy.
I am incensed that ebay did this. If I get a single ebay type ad from anyone I'm calling them if I can find a number on their site.
In the unlikely chance there was actually an error, ebay should have given warning of the change to allow for confirmation that my settings were in order.
If they reset your preferences, and THEN told you, isn't this a violation of their privacy policy? Presumably they did this because they had a really big customer looking to buy their email list, and so they reset everyone's preferences, sold the list, and then let people switch back. So can't Ebay get caught in a class action suit for contract violation?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Nice to see that selecting "no" is an error! :-) What's next then? Maybe they'll have a "no" option in the sign-up, but when you click "Submit", it'll come up with "Error - you failed to fully sign up for mailbox-clogging shite. Please try again."
Grab.
An error? Oh, so de-selecting spam was an error on my part I guess...
Oh good, just what I wanted. Join the hive!
---
Like many folks I have permanent Internet access, so I have a Linux box that acts a Firewall, fileserver, email host, etc, etc.
Unlike most ISP's I get a static IP address, and have registered my own domain, so what I do is every time I have to give out my email for something, I invent a new email address and then just alias it to my real one which I keep secret. Take yesterday for example. I just got a new phone from CarPhoneWarehouse - they wanted an email address from me, so I invented "cpw1" and popped it in the aliases DB when I got home. This has two benefits:
1) If I start getting SPAM addressed to "cpw1", then I know who the villain is who gave it away.
2) All I have to do to stop it is to remove "cpw1" as an alias and they instantly hit the bit bucket.
:-)
Macka
AP - Investors, having learned that Ebay is willing to engage in annoying practices that help them retain market presence, upgraded their price points for Ebay. At time of this press release Ebay's stock is up 9%.
In other news, Ebay CEO Meg Whitman took a break from the work involved in attempting to become the Asian Internet Auction leader, to cry over the loss of one customer.
--
"Don't trolls get tired?"
Your mailbox is at the whim of any idiot with an internet connection. As long as a person's emotional well-being is linked to the contents of his mailbox, he is doomed to frequent bouts of anger. That's why I think the 'war on spam' is ultimately a dead end - there's always one more idiot ready to spam.
The guy who wrote '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' (what's his name?) talks about reducing your circle of concern to match your circle of influence. You can control your mail server and filtering software; you can't control the internet.
The MPAA executive has a heart attack because he can't control the spread of information on the internet. The geek has a heart attack because he can't control the flow of mail into his system.
Maybe there's a parallel with household phones. In the 1970's it was normal that if you dialled a house a loud alarm-like bell went off, and the occupants dropped whatever they were doing and answered the caller. That worked until it was systematically abused by pranksters and telemarketers. Now the norm is for an answering machine to screen the call, and increasingly caller ID is required.
Any protocol which allows you to make me jump via remote control is broken and will be exploited eventually.
Reproduced here as formatted on eBay's sign-up form...
Do you want to receive junk mail from eBay?
No--> o
o<- PattBuchannan
Yes-> o
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
...that the Palm Beach County election board have found themselves a new job.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Technophiles are notoriously weak-willed when it comes to resisting the allure of the new, shiny, and automated. We may talk a good game, but the majority of us still buy CDs, go to movies, passively support the use of Microsoft products (even purchase them), etc. etc. etc.
I'm sorry to be the cynical black cloud here, but "let's rage against everything corporate and wrong in this world" idealism has gotten tired. It's got heart, it's got courage, but it doesn't have a brain -- a brain that knows that Joe Consumer will repeatedly allow himself to be shat upon if he can get the Next Greatest Thing(TM).
eBay won't suffer from this, and I wouldn't be surprised if you frequent their site again within a few months.
This doesn't apply to ebay but if you hate spam
the bets thing to do is reply to it
follow my sig. for details
http://Lenny.com
--May we give out your phone number to telemarketers?
--May we give out your street address to bulk mailers?
--May we give out your email address to 3rd parties for spamming?
AS WELL AS the options for "you've been outbid," "your auction has ended," etc. ALL of these preferences--both desirable and not--had been set to 'yes'
So the person who sent this in [me] read exactly what the preferences sent them, and reacted accordingly.
(and no, I haven't gotten "spam" from them before either, as I had already set these preferences before. Saying that "an error has occurred" to change them is FUD, pure and simple.)
----
----
It is often easer to gain forgiveness than permission
Many times, E-Bay's been a place for me to find junk that just can't be found in my neck of the woods. I think cancellation of your account is kind of an overreaction to the situation. E-Bay's given you the option of setting your preferences back to the way they were, and you won't recieve anything until 1/23, anyway. Set them back yourself, and if they perform a stunt like this again (which I don't think they will) then leave E-Bay.
I think that E-Bay will be well aware of the anxiety this e-mail caused, and avoid situations such as these in the future.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
I believe the difference between your settings and mine may only be that I have the following two set to yes:
Legal Notices
User Agreement Changes
Receive notice from eBay if the current User
Agreement changes.
Privacy Policy Changes
Receive notice from eBay if the current Privacy
Policy changes.
I want to know if their policies change in either of those two areas. I don't want any other junkmail. And I didn't get one of those letters.
But it is certainly odd that they'd assume it was an "error" especially if you've had these settings for some months.
Thalia
"their only source of revenue"? No, it isn't. They charge for each item put up for bid. A company that makes money on spam alone wouldn't do as well as ebay...I hope...
--
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grep "xercist"
I haven't gotten that email, and a quick poll of some ebay users that I'm friends with indicate that I'm not alone. Have you ever thought that maybe a drive died somewhere and they had to restore from tape, resetting your settings or something like that? Maybe you should consider it next time before you start with this "I think I'll use my slashdot gun to get back at them for such an irritation", Hemos. Children like you shouldn't have such power.
Anyway, if you're pissed at the ebay/spam connection, there are much better things to raise your hackles about.. such as spammers getting email addresses from ebay.
This sounds very much like those spammers that offer an "unsubscribe" option in their unsolicited emails. You know, where they send you to a site to unsubscribe which really means you just put your email into a "yep, this one really exists" list and you will now get about four times as many emails from them?
Ebay is giving you the illusion of opting out of their emails, while still preserving their right to make sure you get everything they want you too (by claiming a glitch in the system no less). It's really quite ingenious. The average user would probably figure that there really was a glitch in the system and just shrug it off, meanwhile recieving a bunch of emails and saying, "Didn't I say no to this?" At least, I know quite a number of people that wouldn't be bright enough to connect the few. You know, the people that just totally turn off their brain when they sit in front of a computer? The ones that have to retrained on how to use it every day when they get to work because, "this computer stuff is hard"?
Of course it backfires when there is someone there with more than half of a clue, but they are going to risk that as most of their customers won't have that half a clue.
------------
Okay, fine, it's business. They basically offer a service which includes a bunch of yes/no choices: do you want to receive this, that, and the other.
All of a sudden, they're saying "we know you said you don't want this, but we don't believe you meant it. Let us know if you did."
The point isn't setting up filters. (It isn't even that filters mean the stuff is still going through your ISP.) The point is trust.
Would you do business with a car dealership that sent you a letter saying they were altering your lease, and call by the end of the month if you don't want to pay more? Sure, you have the chance to keep it the way it is. But you shouldn't have to go to extra trouble to get them to stick to an agreed-on set of rules.
This month, they're saying they'll spam people unless they opt out again. A company that would do that is entirely capable of sending out email saying "we noticed an error in your registration. Please log in and go to thus-and-such if you really don't want us selling your name and address."
Yes, eBay has a good record so far. They also have no actual product--they're an intermediary between buyers and sellers. If they lose trust, they're hosed. And this sort of behavior does not inspire me to trust them.
Weblog: http://www.redbird.org/yawl.html
It gets tricky - your data on their servers is being modified by them, because they didn't like your ideas about what you wanted to receive from them. Some would say "But wait, it is their machines, and they can do with the data as they please." - right? Perhaps if you aren't paying for it, but you are, indirectly, by being willing to look at thier banner ads, which you pay for (once again, indirectly) with bandwidth.
Very grey area, to say the least. But what happens in the future...
Dear user,
We are sorry to inform you that your recent email written using BigCorp ASPMailClient did not get sent. In fact, we deleted it, because it said disparaging things about our sister company, SmallCorp. Please refrain from saying bad things we don't like. Remember, we have your credit card number...
Seem impossible? If the dream of ASPs come true, you will pay to see, access, and alter your data, stored remotely on a server not under your control. They may do what they wish with the information, and as current law stands, not by liable for anything they do with it, because the law is in such a grey area over who owns it.
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon