Stupid idiots with their email forwards

[AreaCode707]

Grrr. There's this wonderful local wine shop I love to visit. It's been open about a year, does free wine tastings on Saturdays, has a great specialty selection and is owned and operated by the nicest people in the world. They have an email list you can sign up for and it's not used for anything other than a weekly notification of the wines being tasted on Saturday. Granted, the wine shop owner should have been using the BCC line to send this out but hey, he's a wine shop owner, not a geek.

Last night, some BLITHERING IDIOT :| not affiliated with the shop sent an email forward to the list. Some other BLITHERING IDIOT :| sent a second email forward. Both were semi-crude jokes and neither joke was at all funny. When asked to stop sending the jokes, one person responded that he was glad the jokes went out so that he wouldn't have to stand at a wine tasting counter with the "b!tches like you." :|

The last twelve hours have been a firestorm of people flaming each other and other people requesting to be removed from the list. I feel terrible for this poor wine shop owner; his reliable clientele is falling off like flies because of a few isolated jerks. I think he was just starting to make it into the black too.

I've been standing and watching and not adding to the spam but I just feel so bad for this poor guy.

Cliffs: Idiots spammed a distribution list for a cool local business; local business is now losing clientele

 

[J0hnny]

No business was actually lost that it wouldn't have already. Move on with your life.

 

[Fraggable]

Just tell the shop owner to send out a message telling people to let him know if they want to stay on the list, and he can set up a new distribution list and use BCC from now on.

I don't see why this has to make him lose customers.

 

[preslove]

Wait, the owner published the mailing list?

 

[TheTony]

Originally posted by: HotChic

Granted, the wine shop owner should have been using the BCC line to send this out but hey, he's a wine shop owner, not a geek.

If you're running an email newsletter and maintaing a distribution list, you should know how to do blind carbon copying. Learn it once, save the ongoing headache. Yes, it's not obvious to casual email users, but it's not that difficult to use, either, and it's simply good business, from a privacy standpoint.

I can only imagine he's going to begin using it if he continues with the emails.

 

[gwrober]

Originally posted by: preslove
Wait, the owner published the mailing list?

Sounds like he inadvertantly did, by allowing the addresses to be 'seen'...happens here at work all the time. I hate "reply to all".....

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: Fraggable
Just tell the shop owner to send out a message telling people to let him know if they want to stay on the list, and he can set up a new distribution list and use BCC from now on.

I don't see why this has to make him lose customers.

Already sent that message to him privately. This will make him lose customers because patronage is a fragile thing and it doesn't take much to prevent most people from going to a local business when they can pick up wine at a grocery store.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: preslove
Wait, the owner published the mailing list?

Not exactly, he just had it listed in the "To" field and somebody else was able to pick it up. It's a rookie mistake.

 

[preslove]

Originally posted by: gwrober

Originally posted by: preslove
Wait, the owner published the mailing list?

Sounds like he inadvertantly did, by allowing the addresses to be 'seen'...happens here at work all the time. I hate "reply to all".....

Ouch, that makes sense. That's a pretty bad mistake.

 

[TheTony]

Originally posted by: Fraggable

I don't see why this has to make him lose customers.

Even if he doesn't lose business because of it, if people drop off the list, the owner loses some of the value of the distribution list. In this case, it's a valuable, targeted, direct marketing tool.

He also loses face over it, since it can be viewed as a breach of customer privacy/trust.

 

[mrjminer]

Not intentionally. It sounds like he just listed all of the e-mail addresses in the 'TO:' section instead of BCCing everyone. So, everyone has everyone's e-mail address now.

Late response from opening a lot of threads at once and not refreshing when I finally get to read them =o

 

[kranky]

That's a mistake which often has dire consequences. I was once on a email list for a company that sold pricey collectibles and one time the addresses ended up in the "To:" field instead of BCC. A lot of recipients were incensed at the breach of privacy. There were some people whose email address was their full name (at) ISP.com and the ISP was some dinky place in the middle of nowhere, and they didn't appreciate that people could therefore essentially locate their homes if so determined. As one person said to me (paraphrased), "How hard is it to find RalphStrubachinkoskow@hootervillecoopofmissouri.com?"

It didn't kill their business but I heard through the grapevine that they did lose a lot of customers, even though to my knowledge none of the recipients abused having the addresses. The follow-up apology email didn't really cut it with anyone.

It is indeed a rookie mistake but one that is costly. That's a tough break for the shop owner.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: mrjminer
Not intentionally. It sounds like he just listed all of the e-mail addresses in the 'TO:' section instead of BCCing everyone. So, everyone has everyone's e-mail address now.

Late response from opening a lot of threads at once and not refreshing when I finally get to read them =o

It's not quite that bad. The individual email addresses weren't listed, just an email group (winelist@smallbusiness.com). So nobody had anybody else's address, just the ability to email the entire group. That is, until people began replying individually with REMOVE in the subject line.

 

[bsobel]

It's not quite that bad. The individual email addresses weren't listed, just an email group (winelist@smallbusiness.com). So nobody had anybody else's address, just the ability to email the entire group. That is, until people began replying individually with REMOVE in the subject line.

Why in the world wasnt the list moderated?

 

[nwfsnake]

I am surprised nobody has offered any cheese with this whine!

 

[Kelemvor]

As long as he would send out an apologetic email stating that someone got a hold of his email list and he's very sorry that it happened and that he will setup a new list, I'd think it'd be fine. The people can easily just add the spammer to their Blocked Sender list which should pretty much end the spam pretty much instantly.

 

[FoBoT]

he should have hired a tech person to run his list, maybe he knows more about wine than email