posted on November 15, 2000 05:42:38 AM new
I just got TWO emails from a seller who thought that my one purchase from him/her (made at least 6 months ago) means I am eligible for ads for anything else they list thet might be remotely related to the first item.
I promptly forwarded them to eBay, and sent him/her the URL of the TOS that was violated. Why is it so bloody hard for sellers to read and understand the TOS of eBay when they throw a catfit if a bidder doesn't read and understand their own TOS? Does the thought of potential profits make them lose their intellectual capacity? Do they think the rules are for the rest of the sellers, but they somehow "know" we'd be delighted to buy their stuf because they are special and doing us a favor?
posted on November 15, 2000 06:28:22 AM new
LEGALLY SPEAKING you are wrong. Spam is not anything you didn't personally ask for. You may hate your son, but he sends you a birthday card anyway - sorry but you didn't ask for it, and it may be spam to you, but not legally.
If we have had a business relationship in the past, you bought or sold to or through me, and I write you my letter, sometime in the future, it is not legally spam, regardless of what you think.
Your personal likes or dislikes do not make legal definitions.
You have a delete key on your key board, use it and don't get so upset about nothing - cool out and enjoy life.
posted on November 15, 2000 06:38:49 AM new
SPAM = UCE= Unsolicited Commercial Email
Any email sent in hopes of making a sale is definitely commercial. If I didn't ask for it, it is definitely unsolicited.
eBay's TOS definitely prohibits sellers from emailing any eBay user with ads for auctions without their explicit permission ... so what part of this seller's TOS-breaking SPAM do you find hard to understand?
And I got tired of hitting the Delete key in 1995. NOw I delete spammer's accounts whenever possible. Much more satisfying.
posted on November 15, 2000 07:12:13 AM new
Yes, "deleting a spammers account" is certainly one avenue.
So is sending a polite email requesting that the "offending" party not send anymore solicitations. Since this is someone you did business with in the past.
I don't usually care for "unsolicited offers" from past buyers or sellers either but "deleting a spammers account" for such an "offense" wouldn't even occur to me.
I guess if I were being swamped with offers and my requests to stop were being ignored, I would probably complain to eBay about it but I'm not sure. The delete key is quicker than documenting a case for eBay.
This type of "spam" just doesn't really concern me much. I wouldn't consider two emails any kind of problem at all. JMO.
posted on November 15, 2000 08:04:45 AM new
A year ago, I started searching eBay for an old children's book that I had read and lost. Found it, bid on it, won it. Within days, I received two "saw you bid on a Little Golden Book, check these out," from two different sellers.
I replied politely that (1) I'd been smart enough to find the book I wanted all by myself, and I didn't need advertisements in my inbox, (2) just because I bought one book in the series, certainly doesn't mean I want the entire collection, and (3) this was spam and against eBay's policies.
One of the spammers replied with borderline nastiness, telling me I could simply "delete" any unwanted mail; the other was polite but confused, and it took about 6 email exchanges for it to sink into her/his head what the problem was.
posted on November 15, 2000 08:41:19 AM new
I can definitely see the different perspectives on this subject. I guess I'm just not someone who likes the idea of "turning in" someone to eBay, simply because he or she emailed me with a business offer. Especially if it was someone I'd done business with in the past. That IS the example given in the opening post.
Turning someone in and participating in someones possible suspension from eBay simply because he or she emailed me seems too harsh for the situation described here.
For me, the delete key is the best option for situations like this one. JMO.
posted on November 15, 2000 09:00:55 AM new
There are definitely two schools of thought on this one...
I will say that MANY times, people who I've done business with before were actually grateful that I emailed them about other similar items I had available. They often thank me and tell me to notify them in the future.
I actually have bought things from people who have contacted me based on things I've bid on.
What is the big deal? I currently get 10-20 other SPAM messages a day which I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how much effort I extend. I stopped wasting my precious time on making it stop... I'm finding it borderline impossible.
Sure it's against eBay's policy... but it happens every day. Anyone who is on a personal crusade to try to harm someone's auction business (i.e. warnings and suspensions) really has an extra evil bone in their body (in my humble opinion).
The delete key has never failed me either. It's quick and easy.
posted on November 15, 2000 10:04:13 AM new
There is not yet any legal definition of spam, at least not at the federal level. The most common concise definition is actually the formal name for spam: Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE).
Unsolicited means I did not explicitly ask for additional email beyond the one purchase I'm currently making. Commercial basically means an attempt to sell something. Email is, of course, the medium of transmission.
Frankly, I do not believe a past business "relationship" should give someone the right to send whatever junk mail or telemarketing they want towards me. I bought a product and/or service. That is what I wanted. That is all most people want, IMO. I don't want a side helping of spam or other junk. If I liked the product or service, and liked who I bought it from, I know where to find them, especially in this "Information Age," where eBay and other businesses are only clicks away. What happened to a business building trust with its customer, building a meaningful "relationship" instead of a relationship build on junk (e)mail?
(As an aside, I think the general lack of "trust" is costing online companies billions, given what I hear of surveys that consistently state that 40-60% of potential online customers have balked on at least one sale due to privacy concerns (which means some people balk even more). The general feeling of mistrust and resulting lost sales may be overwhelming the gains made from direct marketing, and may be contributing (in some small or significant way) to the number of etailors going belly up lately. )
If "spam" ever got "legitimized" in the form of a weak opt-out method, people would have to send "polite letters" to potentially hundreds or thousands of direct marketers (which definitely includes eBay sellers sending email to former buyers), and the volume of spam would actually increase because spam would be seen (by companies or other sellers) as "legitimate." I have little doubt this would open even larger floodgates -- all those holding back because of the current ongoing spam war would now think the war is over and start spamming the life out of everyone's email without fear of real consequences, as long as they "honor" a pathetic opt-out system.
I too got tired of waiting extra minutes every week, and then every day, to download spam and delete it. I was just recently sent spam that included a 70K kilobyte attachment by a seller or someone else (I'll have to check old email to see if it is someone I did business with) who "targeted" my aviation interest. Well, the particular item, like over 99-99.99% of all individual items even in an area of interest (e.g. I buy scarcely a fraction, not even that much, of what's on eBay for my areas of interest), aren't of actual individual purchase interest on my part.
A seller (or any company) cannot hope to divine the exact nature of my interests at the time. Buying a model 747 doesn't mean I want another, and doesn't mean I want a 727 model at that time either, or a book on the F-14, or whatever -- and if I ever would want (another), months or years would have past, and I would have long since trashed the great volume of spam.
With the above numbers, I'd have to suffer downloading of 7 - 700M of similarly unwanted ads just to run into one advertising a specific item I happen to want. Even if a spammer never again sent another attachment, just text, that would still be 350K - 35M of junk I'd have to download (and with more and more emphasis on graphics on the Internet in general as time goes on, we're not heading back towards only plain text).
That is the problem with targeting former buyers, in any arena. Even "targeted" junk mail -- even from someone the buyer bought from -- is still mostly time/space/money wasting junk to the recipient. The buyer knows what they want or need. The seller does not, and can only guess. The few who do respond favorably are a tiny minority compared to the ones who have no interest or are annoyed by the ad.
Speaking more generally, but even more firmly....
I do not want to ever see spam "legitimized" in the form of opt-out, or we'll start seeing more of this from all quarters. Writing polite letters to dozens or more eBay sellers, hundreds or thousands of companies would be a never-ending and essentially futile activity, with more ads from new sellers always around the corner.
Spam is the worst form of direct marketing in several other ways, but one key one is it shifts most of the cost of the email to the recipient and the recipient's ISP (which makes running an ISP more expensive, and keeps service offers from getting any lower).
Junk faxes were banned for much the same reasons: they were costing the sender very little, but was costing the recipients in terms of toner, greater repair frequency of the machine, and sometimes, in blanketing their machine with so many ads, the sender interfered with the recipient's ability to find and deal with legitimate business faxes (customer problems, sales leads, orders, etc. ). Spam is very much analogous to junk faxes, and given that some people receive spam in great quantity, why would anyone else be surprised that those people are annoyed or angry about it?
Direct marketing has gotten so bad nowadays that many companies, colleges, stores, credit agencies, and even pharmacies are actually selling their customer information to direct marketers. That's a different subtopic, but I am sick of so many sellers (of any form) doing whatever they want with my information.
These are all reasons why hitting the delete key or writing polite letters is seen as ineffective or useless by many people. It is merely treating the most superficial symptoms of a worsening disease, like taking a non-prescription cold pill for pneumonia. eBay sellers may be only drops (or cups) in the bucket, but the ones who spam their buyers are nonetheless part of the problem, adding to it.
People probably end up wasting perhaps 10-15 minutes a week sorting their postal mail and trashing the junk (and some people who know they should shred credit card offers, having to do that), getting up to answer the phone and wrangle with telemarketers, waiting for spam to download and then deleting it (and occasionally having to recover if they accidentally delete a valid email, or apologizing to the eBay seller whose EOA happened to look like spam), and dealing with the occasional door-to-door solicitor.
15 minutes adds (ads? ) up to twelve hours a year, which over an average adult lifetime, is about six hundred hours (25 entire 24-hour days, or the equivalent of 75 average work days). Averages also say little about the fact some people receive an even greater volume of junk.
All for the sake of a measly response rate averaging, from what I understand, of between 0.5 - 2.0%. What a waste.
People feel harried by having too much to do in a day. Unfortunately, one of those things to do includes dealing with direct marketing, even if only to throw it out or to try to get a word in edgewise with telemarketers. Some of this advertising is subtly or grossly deceptive too. Telemarketers are even worse for trying to push people around, sometimes even lay a guilt trip on them. How arrogant.
Maybe that's the right word. Direct marketing at its very core nature is arrogant, blanketing people with junk ads and calling them with pushy telemarketing, profiling people, and selling them out behind their backs.
This is why some people have lost patience with this whole planeload of garbage. When I was "only" getting junk mail and pushy telemarketing, I dealt with it, albeit with annoyance. Spam was the final straw, the point where I decided to figure out where all the junk was coming from, and why -- and instead of wasting time just "deleting" all this unwanted direct marketing, to figure out its sources and fight against it, to eventually recover that time.
In doing so for the last three years, I've reduced my junk mail by 80%, telemarketing by 95%, and had reduced my spam rate 99.8% to only six items in an entire 19 months -- until (from best I can tell) someone used my presence on eBay to start sending me spam again.
That's why some people battle spam and other direct marketing: to "reclaim" their (e)mail or telephone, their time, and even their money (e.g. spent on CallerID, or spam blocking software).
I am buying a specific product and/or service. If I want to buy another, I'll know how to find you again on eBay or wherever, and I'll actually have more time to buy another product if I'm not wasting time dealing with unwanted junk. Ironic.
Sorry for the length of this note.
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
posted on November 15, 2000 10:52:20 AM newRM and herkimermurray: I understand what you are saying, but I would suggest that the kind of direct marketing just about anyone would find acceptable if applied consistently, would be what's called "opt-in." This means explicitly asking the person buying from you whether they would like to hear of similar offers in the future, or hear from partners have products they might be interested in -- not hiding that you will do so in some fine print, or having an already checked box that they'd have to turn off to block such emails.
Opt-in means they have to willingly say "Yes, I'd like to hear such future offers," or to willingly and knowingly put a checkmark in a blank box next to a similar statement.
This is win-win for buyers, in that those who don't want extra mail won't get it, those who do can; and it is a win to sellers, because buyers will appreciate being asked first, and those who don't want the extra mail won't get annoyed (or angry) and never buy from you (or turn you in).
You'd gain more trust, be able to get extra sales through opt-in direct marketing without costing yourself an equal or greater number of sales from those who don't want the direct marketing.
[ Edited to add: ]
For some, spam has gotten so bad that they don't want any of it, and respond in that manner; and since eBay does have rules commenting on this, it does give them an even more formal basis for complaining about it.
Finally, the advice of many, for spam in general, is to never respond directly to it, only indirectly, such as complaining to the senders ISP or sending it to SpamCop. This is because most spammers use "unsubscribe" addresses as a way of verifying live people and spamming them more. I know this model doesn't apply perfectly to eBay, but it does factor in to people's responses. Also, some people don't keep records or even remember all the old sellers they bought from, so they may not recognize you as someone they bought from. Worse yet, even if you say you are, a lot of other spammers pretend to be former suppliers or sometimes use subject lines that make it look like they might be a such, or even friend, just to get you to open the spam, which helps destroy the credibility of even that.
Simply put, spam is so voluminous, and in many cases deceptive, that the whole advertise by email idea has virtually zero credibility. Amazingly, even the Direct Marketing Association realizes this, from what I've heard, and is coming to realize spam, as it currently is, is destroying the chance for "legitimate" email ads. I'll argue with what they consider "legitimate," but I find it rather interesting that even they seem to think the problem is out of hand.
All of this adds up to the hostility and the "war" that's occuring, and why many people respond the ways they are.
At least that's my opinion.
[ MAJOR editing. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 15, 2000 11:07 AM ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 15, 2000 11:09 AM ]
posted on November 15, 2000 11:06:53 AM new
abacaxi, dc9a320--What specifically do you do to get rid of spam? I use SpamCop, but that really seems to help very little.
Case in point: recently I changed my email address on eBay on both accounts (I have one for selling and one for buying). Since the change, I have only used my buying account ONCE. That email address only appears on ONE completed auction.
Within days I was receiving spam to that email address.
Lately I have taken a hiatus from selling on eBay so the only place my "selling" email appears is on one of the Boards. Spam is now coming to that address.
Neither address has been used anywhere but on eBay.
My previous "buying" email, which received the majority of the spam, is deactivated from appearing in my IN BOX, but is still on my ISP. I have gone to look at what's there: there are over 60 spam messages in a matter of, say three weeks.
eBay is the source of ALL my spam!! They are doing nothing to prevent spammers from coming in and harvesting email addresses; plus they are likely selling my information to third parties.
Like I said, SpamCop does not seem to decrease the amount of spam coming in. All these spammers do is get another email address and try again....
posted on November 15, 2000 11:36:19 AM new
As both a Seller and a hater of spam, I applaud your actions, abacaxi!
You know, there have to be limits to Sellers sending unsolicited e-mails to other eBay users. If you let this thing go, so many Sellers will start to spam buyers that the users will be hesitant to shop on eBay anymore. Clearly, the line to draw for Seller spam is a zero tolerance policy.
So please, please turn in any Seller to eBay anytime that you get sent unsolicited advertising from. I sure will!
posted on November 15, 2000 11:50:36 AM new
IMO too many times "zero tolerance" policies are really saying "stop thinking" and just react. One size very rarely fits all. JMO.
posted on November 15, 2000 12:00:58 PM new
RM -
It's MY mailbox, so I get to decide the policies And after almost 6 years of ever-increasing spam, I launch a full thermonuclear arsenal at the offender at the first sight of their spam.
A few sellers hace asked me if they could notify me about their listings, I sais "no" or did not reply with a "yes". They have honored my request and I probably buy from them occasionally.
posted on November 15, 2000 12:20:07 PM new
I have an honest-to-goodness question:
A few months ago, I sold a rather expensive set of a specific porcelain. This past week-end, lo! I found some matching pieces to that sold set, and sent buyer a notification of this find, together with the referenced Auction No. to the original transaction, and a photo of a piece, to refresh her memory. I really do not recall if I offered to put her on my mailing list...She has not replied, one way or the other.
Was that considered SPAM? I Hate SPAM, and would feel awful being guilty of sending some! Thanks....
******************** Gosh Shosh!
posted on November 15, 2000 12:40:26 PM new
I keep hearing mixed results with SpamCop. Some say the volume of email goes done significantly after awhile, others (like you), say it doesn't. Hard to say. It might depend on the specific batch of spammers that you end up with as opposed to someone else.
The problem with eBay is that anytime you bid on or sell an item, your get listed on an auction page, and your address is accessible to another member. At minimum, eBay should not be exposing bidders' addresses to anyone but sellers. eBay is just starting to take some partial steps in that regard. Someone in another thread is advocating an even stronger solution: protecting email addresses by using a go-between form so that only eBay knows the specific addresses in the message.
All told, there are several different avenues of getting spammed in the "world" of eBay:
1) You buy something from a seller and w/o asking, that seller, weeks or months later, sends you ads for other auctions or items.
2) The seller turns around and sells your information to a direct marketer.
3) The seller doesn't just sell products, but is also a direct marketer.
4) A direct marketer (spammer) signs on but doesn't buy or sell, just goes around collecting email addresses.
5) eBay or its "partners" send email. There are "preference" settings that you should check.
6) DoubleClick finds a way of associating your cookies to your email address, starts tracking your eBay activity by less anonymous email address information rather than just the somewhat more "anonymous" cookie ID, and sells that information to spammers.
#1 is perhaps least offensive but is still something sellers could save both buyers and themselves grief simply by ASKING first. I doubt #2 is that common, but #3 might be. #3 would be analogous to those TV ads for cheesy products "not available in stores," since I believe the main purpose of those ads is not really to sell that particular product, which is merely bait, but to hook more addresses and other data for direct marketing purposes. #4 is probably getting quite common, as the lure of email addresses (especially with a known connection to buying X, Y, and Z), is too tempting to ignore. I haven't seen any problem with #5; eBay seems to pay attention to such preferences, though the last time they changed layouts, at least some people (myself included) ended up re-defaulted to receiving such email. #6 is hard to say; DoubleClick is capable of associating such information, given that you can go to many websites and still be followed by the same DC cookie ID, and it only takes one DC partner selling your email address or other information (or exposing it by incorporation into the URL) to spark the Web-wide connection.
(BTW, DC and other banner-ad companies fall into the "our privacy policy statements do not cover advertisers on our site, who will have different privacy policies of their own"-type clauses that many websites have. )
As to how I specifically avoided all but 6 pieces of spam for a 19-month period....
Well, "avoid" was the key word for me. I don't know how helpful the following might be, but it could give you more context to understand how spam, in part, happens to find you, and thus in some ways of avoiding it.
I first got on the Internet five years ago. Before e-commerce really started to get rolling in a big way, the spam did. In other words, before I ever saw the "cool" possibility of buying products off the Web, I saw the garbage -- in ever increasing volume and disgusting nature -- first.
Then when ecommerce first started getting so noticeable, it wasn't long before I realized and read that many online companies were doing the same sorts of things I was learning about many offline companies: selling your information to third parties, including direct marketers, behind your back. In a sense, I was offended before I could even make my first online purchase.
I started figuring out that there are a few popular ways that direct marketers were obtaining email addresses:
1) Usenet posting.
2) Chatroom activity.
3) Email discussion lists with Web archiving.
4) Companies selling and otherwise misusing this information, sometimes against the spirit or through a loophole of their privacy statement.
5) Listing your address on your webpage.
6) Joining an ISP known for spam.
7) Through the email setting in your browser (i.e. one of the browser's setup screens).
So by the time I dumped my 6-10 spam (12-100K) per day address (for a combination of reasons, including its being known to spammers), I knew how to modify my flight so I could drop below their radar with minimal effort:
1) "Munge" the address used on Usenet
2) (Well, I never have been interested in chat rooms, so I don't know what, if anything, can be done there. )
3) Be more picky about the lists posted to, and preferentially pick ones that "munge" addresses and/or limit access.
4) Limit online purchases or site registrations made. Amazon's recent statments certainly made me glad I never registered there or at IMDb.
5) Use a form with a CGI script.
6) Avoid ISPs or free email services that have a reputation for spam.
7) Get a separate email client and don't store an email address in a browser setting.
Now #4 was not hard, because like I said, I was offended by the too-frequent corporate abuse of customer data before I even started buying.
I did sign on eBay, however, deciding to chance eBay's policies and also because it was primarily person-to-person or person-to-small-company "venue." I felt such sellers were relatively safe, and that eBay was okay, failing to realize that having an eBay ID still made my address rather accessible to others, or that eBay would later invite DoubleClick to the party.
Now, I'm actually surprised how long I was active as a buyer on eBay and not getting spammed because of it.
I now do have a secondary address that filters through SpamCop, which I learned, post eBay signup, to use on the infrequent occasions I do register at some site, but I only make limited use of the address, for other reasons.
As to my primary email address now getting spammed again, I'd like to see eBay further block access to email addresses to only those who actually need them. That won't save me from what I am now starting to get with greater quantity, but I could at least shift to a new email address with greater comfort at being able to use the new one on eBay.
So now I'm in the position of having to figure out what to do next, but regardless of what I do, I will not be inclined to register at more corporate sites until they wake up to what I feel is the unethical nature of selling their customer data without explicit permission.
Almost everything online can be found offline, where I can avoid such abuse and also more clearly see the item beforehand -- and even with "collectibles," I've learned that there's a whole world of collectible searching offline, at antique stores for example.
Thanks to eBay's exposing emails, and whoever is spamming me because of it, I am now buying less at eBay and more in my local area.
Sorry if this isn't the most helpful for you. Besides SpamCop, there are a lot of spam blocking software packages out there, with greater or lesser effectiveness, though most of those will cost you some money (ironic, eh, having to spend money to block junk you never wanted? ).
----
What's being done in the name of direct marketing nowadays is crazy.
The above are all just my opinions, except where I cite facts as such.
Oh, I am not dc9a320 anywhere except AW. Any others are not me.
Is eBay is changing from a world bazaar into a bizarre world?
[ Edited for minor clarifications, slightly less length, but also to add #7. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 15, 2000 01:02 PM ]
posted on November 15, 2000 01:03:59 PM new
Just a comment: If Ebay's TOS states you cannot sent unsolicited email advertising your AUCTIONS, but email is sent to an Ebayer you have a prior transaction with, offering direct sales or trades, or just information like the teaset information, is that SPAM?
posted on November 15, 2000 02:07:30 PM newRM: True (zero tolerance is often very problematic), but... the thing with spam is that it has, in more than just a few people's eyes, gotten way out of control, so they started fighting a war that has practically gone thermonuclear because it spam is so voluminous and often deceptive.
It's not like the rare "bad" spam shows up among a small volume of commercially-related notes such as Shoshanah's and some of the other things mentioned in other threads, but rather that there is a huge volume of distinctly unwanted, "bad," often deceptive spam, with the occasional, rare, potential, and hard to confirm as truly honest, exception. The potentially "nicer" UCE are lost in the sheer ugly noise of the far greater bulk of UCE, so the former gets perceived as nothing but adding to the latter.
Regardless, and in general, I don't want sellers I bought from in the past to contact me about their other stuff without my explicit permission, because while they might think they're doing me some sort of service while also hyping their product, they really cannot guess well what I want, as I already discussed at great length in a prior note. I could easily end up with tons of "look what I'm selling this week" notes, when I can easily enough find their stuff again on eBay itself. I don't want this, or any smaller volume of such notes, because when I want to buy something, and you're selling it, I can find it when *I* want to find it, not when you feel like wasting my time and hard drive space forcing me to download a note about it.
Sellers, please, if you want to maintain a mailing list, explicitly ask for my permission, and honor me if I don't give it. I will actually appreciate you for doing so. Most companies don't do this yet, nor do most of the hopefully still small number of eBay sellers that want to maintain email lists. Thus, I am real touchy about this issue, even going so far as to avoid auctions whose EOA would force me to enter information with a third party.
Shoshanah's note is curious, because it is on the fence, and probably does not quite fit the best-known definition of spam. Though refering to something commercial in nature (a particular auction), Shoshanah was not, if I understand her correctly, trying to sell her own product, or even trying to sell another seller's product, but rather give a helpful bit of information. So it wasn't even an advertisement, at least in the normal sense.
This honest type of attempt to help has been largely spoiled, however, because spammers can and have adopted the "look what I found for you" attitude in some spams, though they are being deceiving because they are advertising their own products or those of one of their partners (so this is, of course, spam).
Shoshanah does not appear to be associated with the second seller in her example, nor did she give her former bidder's information to the seller, but rather filled in the bidder to this, and she apparently did it without the deception that spammers use.
However, with spammers using the "look what I found for you" line, even this more honest path has now been messed up. Unfortunately, eBay or one of the auction managers also allowed sellers to send an email to some specified address(es), and it carried a similar title, ticking off list members who immediately saw it was that same otherwise reputable person who was selling the product (i.e. "look what I found" when refering to one's own auction is tacky at best, deceptive at worse, but also has degraded the "look what I found" angle). Finally, some people, myself included, do not approve of sellers, on eBay, elsewhere online, or offline, sending me more ads after the one transaction is done, and your note could get mistaken for that sort of thing too.
This is how the pernicious, voluminous, and too frequently deceptive nature of spam is messing up the potential for honest communication, and is part of what is creating the "just nuke it" trend towards all UCE and anything that looks like UCE, because the rare exceptions are rare and don't even look like exceptions because of the deception some spammers are using (e.g. "look what I found" ). [grumble]
If applied sparingly, honestly, and in the (currently nonexistent) absence of the current volume and nature of spam, occasional notes like hers would have never triggered the level of disgust and hair-trigger "nuclear" reactiveness at spam that so many people now have -- maybe no wide annoyance at all.
No, Shoshanah, even I don't think your note was spam (it is the first such "is this spam?" question I've seen at AW that I could say was not, IMO, spam), if I am understanding you correctly; but, given everything else, it may still have ended up looking like it anyway, simply because most spam IS spam, and most "look what I found" notes are also spam, and because "here is what you asked for" notes are also spam.
The true exceptions are exceedingly rare, and will look like the rule rather than the exception. Most people will not waste time trying to figure out the difference because 99% or more of the time, it will be spam, and they'll have just wasted their time reading it.
So unfortunately, you end up in a bind. You are honestly trying to help, but everything else has made it difficult for your honesty to look different than the deceptiveness of the many times larger volume of spam that sometimes masquerades as friendly and honest for the first several, key sentences.
Sad, truly sad.
One thing, however, I wouldn't have offered in such a note, is to add anyone to an email list on that occasion: though you'd look more honest for asking in other contexts, asking in this context would bring "commercial," rather than honestly helpful, more to mind, like your note was partially about perhaps adding people to lists.
I would definitely applaud you for asking about mailing list adding in your regular EOA. This is honest and respectful, and I, as a buyer, greatly appreciate being given the choice, even if I always say "no."
[ Edited for clarifications, again. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 15, 2000 02:19 PM ]
posted on November 15, 2000 02:43:45 PM newkatiyana: You're asking about two different situations.
The teaset situation Shoshanah brought up is one of the truly rare exceptions I wouldn't consider spam, because the second auction was not hers, nor was she playing a little advertising game for the sake of a friend, relative, or business partner. Others might not agree with my making this exception, but the real trouble is from spammers who pretend to be unassociated with the auction, sending "look what I found" notes even though they are flat out advertising for their own or a partner's product. Shoshanah apparently was not, but her rare exception would tend to be awfully hard to distinguish from spammers' deceptions.
However, and this is an important however, the second situation of sending email ads about direct sales or trades, is potentially something else entirely.
I'm not sure about what eBay would say to that. Having a text link to your main sales site, from an auction, is apparently allowed (or tolerated? ) by eBay, but I don't know about the email. Some situations can become "fee avoidance," but I'm not sure how close they are to what you're suggesting.
However, in general, by most individual's definition or perception of spam, including mine, what you suggest would be spam, because it is unsolicited, commercial, and email. It is advertising your own products by sending people email ads, when they may not have given explicit prior permission.
If you ask, in an honest fashion, in your EOA, if they like to receive other ads from you, and they say yes, then what you send subsequently would not be UCE/spam, because it would not be unsolicited, as long as you heed any unsubscribe requests people might make.
Asking beforehand, and honoring their choices, make all the difference between Unsolicited Commercial Email and opt-in commercial email.
[ Edited to remove .sig from this note. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 15, 2000 02:44 PM ]
posted on November 15, 2000 03:16:56 PM new
What I have taken to doing is adding a sentence to the invoice I include with the merchandise. Something to the effect of "I distribute a trading newsletter for other collectors of this merchandise. If you would like to be included in this list, just send me email!".
I admit when I first started out, I was ignorant of the spam rules, but I found only a small handful were not interested in participating. In fact, my list became quite daunting because everyone was participating! I've lost people along the way and weeded out those who are no longer active by having current users "renew" their membership (which is totally free). Its helped a lot when there are people not interested in participating who don't let me know directly, if they don't "renew" they get dropped.
Now that I am slightly more savvy, I have picked up on the rules and have taken to issuing invitations, and sending my newsletter only to those who request it.
posted on November 15, 2000 03:26:11 PM new
Hi DC Nice seeing you...
I need to clarify my Mailing List thingy.
I usually ask buyer if they would like to be contacted, should I ever come across an item by same maker. The majority say "yes, please!", and their address is entered in my Wish List database. So, it is NOT a list with which I bombard hundreds of bidders
posted on November 15, 2000 03:50:43 PM newThis past week-end, lo! I found some matching pieces to that sold set, and sent buyer a notification of this find, together with the referenced Auction No. to the original transaction, and a photo of a piece, to refresh her memory. I really do not recall if I offered to put her on my mailing list...She has not replied, one way or the other. Was that considered SPAM? I Hate SPAM, and would feel awful being guilty of sending some!
Some would say it was spam, if you offered it specially to that buyer before you listed it. Some would not.
All, including eBay, would say it was despised spam if you listed it and sent notification of the auction to the old buyer.
posted on November 15, 2000 04:46:47 PM new
I have not listed the pieces. As I said, I gave her the Auction number of the other, closed auction, and included a photo of one of the pieces, so that, should she be looking to add to her set, she would know there are pieces available.
On an other occasion, another buyer was very pleased to be given the opportunity to add to his collection, even though he did not buy...
********************
Gosh Shosh!
posted on November 15, 2000 05:48:05 PM new
katiyana -
If you stand to profit from the transaction, and you don't have the recipient's permission ... it's SPAM!
ANOTHER WAY TO AVOID SPAM: Do not put ANYTHING in "member directories"!
posted on November 15, 2000 05:58:48 PM new
As I said, even though I received no complaints, I got the approval of members who wished to continue once I caught on to things. And since then, its been very successful. 99% of those I contacted were happy to hear from me, and probably 75% of those continue to participate in my trading circle.
posted on November 15, 2000 08:22:48 PM newSo please, please turn in any Seller to eBay anytime that you get sent unsolicited advertising from. I sure will!
I don't think so, some of us enjoy hearing about "special" offers. Of course if it's an auction listing, I usually do report it, don't want to be bothered with bidding...
posted on November 16, 2000 11:52:49 AM newkatiyana: Sounds like you have caught on perfectly well. What you describe as your current setup (including a sentence in your invoice and only adding to your list those who write back and request to be added) is definitely not spam. This is "opt-in" email, the type of email (and postal mail, and calls) I also wish direct marketers would be required to abide by.
That by itself is exactly the polite thing to do.
The only additional thing I might do, after having administered a (majordomo-based) mailing list myself, is to keep an eye out for one of your buyers trying to sign someone else onto your list as a joke. That is, your buyer "B" may give you the address of person "Z" just to tick off "Z" (it might sound ridiculous, but believe me, it does occasionally happen, at least outside of the world of auctions, and the "Z" party tends to be annoyed or angry about it).
I doubt this problem is common on non-public lists, however, so you probably don't have to worry about it much, but it is one of the "gotchas" about even opt-in lists. This is why "double opt-in" or "confirmed opt-in" exists. This mostly means that if you are given an address to be signed on, and it doesn't match the address of the person that just replied, such as the following:
If you get one where they are asking you to sign up a different address than what's in the "From" line or what you already recognize from your transaction, I would send a note to the requested address, such as this:
I received your request that this address be signed up on my ____ list. I just wanted to confirm this is the correct address first, before adding it to the list. If it is correct, please reply to me that it is, and I will add you immediately.
****
You only need to do this where someone lists a new address that isn't the one you've been getting email From. Otherwise, if someone requests being added, and they do not give you some separate address to add, you don't have to bother with the confirmation step, and can just add them.
This problem only arises infrequently, and you could run a small list for years without a problem, but it is just an additional suggestion to eliminate that one leftover problem.
Again, you are already doing the right thing by using opt-in methods, so keep doing that. I just added this one extra suggestion as something you can take a second or two to look for, to potentially avoid one extra, occasional source of trouble.
Thanks; if everyone were doing what you're doing now, I'd have no reason to complain!
posted on November 16, 2000 12:46:40 PM new
Hi, Shoshanah. To be honest, I think I'm about to end up annoying you a little bit, however, as I read your latest note and reread some of your earlier notes, and realized I misunderstand the description of your prior event.
I thought you were refering to having found someone else's ongoing auction and pointing your former buyer at that, as a helpful, honest tip from someone who wasn't involved with the new set.
I realize now you probably meant you had found actual pieces yourself, and emailed a former bidder about them. If true, this does, unfortunately, end up being spam. Your intentions were honest, but since you'd be trying to sell something of yours, the email becomes commercial in nature, and since it's unsolicited as well, it is UCE.
Sorry, I know a lot of these things are done with honest intent, being helpful to a former buyer while hopefully selling what you currently have. In a perfect world where there wasn't the problem of awful volumes of sometimes deceptive spam, what you did, if kept low volume and within reason, would not really be considered a problem. Such a small grey area wouldn't be an issue. However, with the sheer volume and sometimes deceptiveness of UCE, small grey areas tend to look like any other part of the huge problem.
That said, one cases of this, on its own, is a molehill, and I'd tend to recognize the honest intent and not nuke away, but others might.
The solution is easy, and I see you are already using it for the most part, but I'll describe it briefly for the sake of lurkers.
Write something like the following into your EOA or other invoice:
"If I find a very similar item, or the rest of the set, would you like me to email you about it? Or do you have a particular wish list you'd like to send me, so that if I find one, I can email? If yes on either question, please write back and specify which."
Those who respond to this and specify yes, you can email later, according to their wishes, and be helpful (to them and hopefully yourself too ).
Those who don't respond to this or respond by specifying no, you can forget about them, and be helpful that way (by not ending up sending what amounts to spam).
This sounds a bit more complicated, and less spontaneously helpful, I realize, but it does otherwise amount to a win-win for everyone, because it is a spam-free system.
Wish lists are pretty common at offline antique shops, from what I've noticed (I have even signed onto a couple, believe it or not, after verifying they keep my information to themselves, of course ). Maybe this opt-in "wish list" concept needs to be adapted from the offline antique world to more of the online auction world.
I am sorry for replying inconsistently, Shoshanah, and taking back much of what I had previously said, but I misunderstood what you had written.
Stick consistently with asking users in your EOA or invoice, and letting them ask for such future mail, and you'll be fine.
Oh, one final thing: watch out with images; these can be annoying in their size. Even with an opt-in list, you don't want to drop images on people unexpectedly, so if you find something of potential interest to someone who has opted into a mailing or wish list, please use the following in place of an image:
"An image is available, either in a small size (??K) or a large size (???K). Email me if you wish for me to email one of these to you."
The thing about small or large is important, because if you have a large image but don't offer a smaller-sized one, and just send some 180K image, when the user might have been expecting a more reasonable size, would not be the greatest. (I would never exceed 250K under any circumstance, however. )
Hope this helps, and sorry for the confusion.
[ Edited to clarify something about images. ]
[ edited by dc9a320 on Nov 16, 2000 12:49 PM ]
) up to twelve hours a year, which over an average adult lifetime, is about six hundred hours (25 entire 24-hour days, or the equivalent of 75 average work days). Averages also say little about the fact some people receive an even greater volume of junk.
