Unethical Practice twist

From: John Smart <JSmart_at_InternetDesign.com>
Date: Tue 10 Sep 2002 21:45:16 -0500

Unethical Practice twist

I receive a lot of e-Mail offering to refinance my home. The e-Mail traced
back to big spam servers, or to very dubious Yahoo/AOL type accounts. Whois
on the domain names gave false numbers and addresses (Tel 555.555.5555 email
noone_at_yahoo.com).

I decided that the time had come to fill in the form, and see who called me.
Entering my phone number and name, a fictitious address, e-Mail address and
personal details, I waited for the phone to ring.

Two hours later, I got a call regarding my online request for a loan. I
explained about the spam, and that I did not want a loan - if I did I wanted
to use a reputable, honest company, and I would be most grateful if they
could refrain from calling/mailing me again. A confused sounding gentleman
promised to make sure his company didn't contact me again.

I was wrong to complain to this guy - it wasn't his company's doing. I found
that out when the phone rang again an hour later, and a similar conversation
occurred.

I sent the spam reply on Friday Sept 6. At the time of writing (Tuesday Sept
10th, 9 AM) I have received 9 phone calls about this loan request. Each
company I spoke to was amazed that they were not the only one to call me.
Each one was very friendly - to give them fair credit.

So where am I going with this? I think this shows 1 thing, and allows us to
do another:

The company that spammed me sold my details to several companies, telling
each one that they were the only one. This is fraud. When I told the
companies this, and how their lead-generating company was spamming to get
leads, they all seemed concerned (granted I was talking to a sales rep, not
a manager, but I got lucky with who I spoke to - especially the last company
to call - and was given a lot of information on the workings and policies of
the company).

However, are these companies going to believe me? If I ran a company and had
out-sourced some leads, if I got one complaint, would I chase it up too see
what was going on? Probably not. There are so many complainers, whiners,
etc, I would not spend my time looking into one strange complaint. So maybe
more of us should do this - fill in phone numbers, and complain politely to
those who call us. I appreciate that many of you do not have the time to do
this, and many more will see it as futile. But if one of you does, and our
paths cross so one manager gets two complaints about this, maybe something
will happen.

After all, their staffs time will be being wasted (not the primary goal
here), and that will cost them money (again not the primary goal), which may
lead them to look into the matter more seriously.

OF course, there is always the possibility that I am being hopelessly
optimistic, thinking that I can help change a big problem like this, but if
you don't try, then you definitely won't succeed.

John Smart
Technical Director
InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World (TM)
http://www.InternetDesign.com






Received on Tue Sep 10 2002 - 21:45:16 CDT