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Toyota Claims Woman "Opted In" To Faux Email Stalking
An anonymous reader writes "ABC News is reporting that a California woman is suing Toyota for $10 million for sending her email that appeared to be from a criminal stalker. The woman claims the emails terrified her to the point that she suffered sleeplessness, poor work performance, etc. Toyota says the ruse was part of a marketing campaign for the Toyota Matrix. A Toyota spokesman says they are not liable for the woman's distress, because 'The person who made this claim specifically opted in, granting her permission to receive campaign emails and other communications from Toyota.'"
Saatchi & Saatchi told the marketing magazine OMMA last year that it had developed the campaign to target men under 35 who hate advertising.
I'm over 35 and I really hate advertising now. If I did something like this, I'd be in jail awaiting trial, my name would be smeared all over the place, and my life as I know it would be over - even Saatchi & Saatchi wouldn't hire me.
Toyota? Nothing.
Saatchi & Saatchi? They'll probably get more business because the dipshit MBAs will think that "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
Assholes.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Did you read the article?
Toyota's marketing campaign was in POOR taste, although one wonders why she never reported it to the police.
I think giving her 10 million seems high, but I think that a class action suit with everyone who got this incredibly lame marketing campaign isn't such a bad idea.
Pretend stalking someone is a terrible idea.
How about this:
What if you kept getting phone calls.. that said:
I'm coming for you.. in a mysterious raspy voice, at all times of the day.
That would be a clear cut case of stalking and instilling fear.
"Yeah, you need $10 million to cover that" - Tell me then, how do you punish a company except by a fiscal penalty?
How does this in any way make anyone want to buy a Toyota?
I get that companies all want to 'push the envelope' these days so you see them over the competition, but this is just ridiculous.
I guess that's another benefit to marking every email I don't recognise as spam.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Agreed, a normal person who'd never done anything wrong would obviously assume an anonymous stranger threatening them was playing a prank on behalf of a large company. The vast majority of stalking cases are like that, and innocent people are never targeted by crazy people for no reason.
Seriously though, WTF are you talking about?
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
weird isn't worth $10 million...
I'm not quite sure how you'd word an "Op-In" agreement that would effectively cover this; "I consent to receive life threatening emails, harassed, etc."?
In other words anything that would, in plain English, explain what you were agreeing to, no one would sign.
And regarding $10M, though this may seem like a lot of money, the point to this type of suit is deterrent, and at $10M, I doubt that it is.
Maybe, but terrifying sure is. Victims of stalking find that they are incapable of doing day-to-day things. The lady had a legitimate fear, she told her friends, then she later was ridiculed for those fears. This is all the fault of Toyota.
I for one hope that she wins the whole $10 million. Maybe only that way will dumb-ass marketers start *thinking* about what they do!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No, but if you make $9 million in profit and lose $10 million in a lawsuit, then they'll not do the marketing campaign again. Even if they make $12 million from the campaign (doubtful), the return becomes so small that it's not worth them doing any more. Further to this, hopefully the arsehole marketer who came up with the idea loses a job or some advertising agency loses revenue as Toyota moves to another company.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
They sure did. Very creepy, and no doubt terrifying at the time... ummm...
Except if it was so terrifying, why did she do everything but call the police, who have the powers to actually investigate things like this and would have probably figured out in about 5 minutes who sent the emails? Why make her boyfriend sit by the bed with a club, when she's getting notices from someone who sounds like a hardened and probably ARMED criminal that they are coming for a visit? If this were a real event, she and her boyfriend would likely be dead by now.
Why sit cowering in your home for FIVE DAYS then claim you were unable to live your life for MONTHS, when a quick three-digit phone call ("911", in case anyone has forgotten the number) would have started an investigation that would have rapidly debunked it in a hurry? Toyota would have no doubt issued a deep apology to avoid a lawsuit, suffered some well-deserved bad press, and Ms. Duick could have gone about her life with nothing more than a probable (and understandable) lifetime hatred/contempt of Toyota Motor Company, and not a long-term debilitating fear.
I'm not saying Toyota was in the right here. No way. This was just plain effing stupid.
I think both parties are clearly in the wrong. Toyota's actions were reprehensible and deserving of punishment, but Ms. Duick's response (or utter lack thereof) certainly gave Toyota no indication of the harm they were causing to her. They thought they had agreement, she was unaware of the agreement, they acted stupidly, and she didn't do anything useful to help herself until after she found out it was a prank ad campaign.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Maybe, but terrifying sure is. Victims of stalking find that they are incapable of doing day-to-day things. The lady had a legitimate fear, she told her friends, then she later was ridiculed for those fears. This is all the fault of Toyota.
I for one hope that she wins the whole $10 million. Maybe only that way will dumb-ass marketers start *thinking* about what they do!
I suspect (but do not know) that once we see the actual emails there's no way on earth anyone with an IQ above retarded would believe it was real. Have you ever seen one of these campaigns? Even imbeciles know they're fake.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
On the one hand, $10 million isn't something to sneeze at, even for a company with $200 billion in yearly revenue. That $10 million represents a lot of lower level employee's worth of salary which might lead to lots of average Joes getting layed off (face it, it won't be the execs. that feel the hurt). On the other hand, it sounds, to me, like they, honestly, earned the punishment (though, perhaps somewhat less than what she's asking) on this one. It isn't reasonable to say that just because she checked a box somewhere agreeing to accept marketing communications from a company that she should expect those communications to take the form of a simulated stalking. What next, are they going to go door to door in white robes burning crosses on people's front lawns to drum up attention for next year's Carolla?
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
One solution is to apply the very same punitive penalty, but award the punitive part of it to a fund/charity. In essence, whenever a major company causes somebody harm, that person is eligible to receive whatever amount is considered reasonable depending on the damages. In addition to that, the company is also fined an amount that is relative to its size and financial status, simply as a form of punishment. The latter amount never comes in contact with the victim.
The elegant thing about giving victims the penalty money is that it encourages them to take on litigation. A lawsuit is expensive, risky, and time-consuming. Without motivating litigants and lawyers with potential rewards, the powerful would be much freer to abuse the weak. In your system, this lady would stand to win at most a few thousand in actual damages, but would risk losing tens of thousands in costs should Toyota prevail. Further, all the good lawyers would be on salary or retainer for large companies; few would be willing to work for a chance to get paid a reasonable hourly rate.
It's good to keep large companies walking on eggshells when it comes to causing harm, and the current tort system is the best way we know to do so that we can afford.
What is with the 'victimization' culture these days?
You mean, among people who have genuine greviances? Yeah, I know! The "victims" of my pyramid scheme have SUCH a sense of entitlement!
Grow a pair and make some more money for me to steal.
I tried telling the judge that many of the people I ripped off weren't even trying to get new jobs at say, Mc Donalds to earn more money, so they obviously weren't hurt enough to change anything about their life. Jerks.
Sincerely,
Bernie Maddoff
You have probably an overly optimistic guess as to what the police would have done. (On top of that, the article does not specify one way or the other whether or not she called the police)
Here's my guess about what that 911 call would have sounded like:
911) What's your emergency?
Woman) A man is coming to my house.
911) Who is the man, and has he threatened you?
Woman) I don't know, and no, he hasn't threatened me. He's just coming to my house.
911) You don't know who the man is?
Woman) No, I only got an email. I've never met him.
911) I'm sorry, unless there is a man in your presence who has made a credible threat against you or physically assaulted you, we can't do anything. Have a nice day.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Man, you've got your headquarters in your hindquarters. No offense. Even if we grant your premise, that some large proportion of people would spot the campaign as fake, you have to remember that (1) Telling lies from truth is different from IQ. Some very bright people are extremely gullible, some very dull people have an unerring radar for falsehoods. (2) It's neither morally nor legally permissible to purposely scare the hell out of someone merely because they're less intelligent. (3) Many tens of thousands of people - mostly women - are stalked each year in this great nation, and a portion of them murdered by their stalkers. So a campaign like this odds are will reach some of them, who already know that stalking threats are real, have already been stalked, and just like a veteran hearing a backfire and finding himself back in battle, can easily be returned to the real psychological state - even by an instance they intellectually know is fake.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I used to be in favor of the 'corporate death penalty', and I still am, but only in a certain way.
We shouldn't break the company. What we should do is fire all corporate executives (Everyone who legally empowered to agree to contracts.), and the board of directors, cancel all stock and leave it operated by the government for a while. (1) They will run it basically as before, and also do a housecleaning to find illegal behaviors that have become ingrained in the company.
It then, after about a month, publish balance sheets and stuff so that people can see how it's doing. Then the company should issue new stock, under a new stock symbol, on the stock exchange, so people can purchase it. And the new owners will, presumably, elect a new board of directors, etc, and the temporary executives put in by the government will resign.
I.e., we don't need to dissolve the company if they commit crimes. We need to fire the people who ran the company in a criminal manner, and we need to take it away from the owners who let the company get run in a criminal manner. Then we clean it up, and sell it to whoever's willing to pay for it.
'The company', as an abstract entity that presumably provides some actual services, and employs a bunch of people, can continue to exist. So 'death penalty' isn't really the right word. Let's call it corporate forfeiture. (Hey, if we call it that, does that mean we don't have to have a trial?)
1) The government running a company, incidentally, is not without precedent, especially during bankruptcy. The federal government does assume caretaker responsibility of some business, the most famous example being when it found itself running a brothel in Nevada for about a year.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
1) most of the time people suing corporations are lazy people that want to get rich
Here's a radical question: do you have any idea if this is true?
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