by George Bounacos
Shopping at the beginning of June brought me a lot of spam from two merchants I previously considered higher caliber. One was a bricks and mortar retailer and the other was the online arm of another famous retailer. Luckily, I have a free solution to tackle both.
Spammer #1 - MicroCenter
My network consultant was very happy when we moved offices June 1, and he got to make a shopping list for a trip to a real computer store. We drove over to MicroCenter, and I was not surprised to see that there was gentle pressure throughout our buying cycle of PCs, cables and various other little parts designed to finish off our networking. Network guys always buy online so getting to roam the store was a treat for my business partner.
I was surprised to see that I was briefly stopped as I left the computer area to go to the main store. Just like in an auto dealership, we were approached by a closer whose job was to sell extended service agreements (what others often wrongly call "a warranty"). The salesman effectively waved him off by saying that we were professional geeks.
We were stopped again at the cash register, but one look at the base gear we had bought convinced the front manager we would not be easy marks and had no intention of buying anything extra. She too thanked us and waved us on our way, but not before the cashier pushed for an email address. No dummy, I had one already to give him. (More on that in a minute because it's awesome)
Spammer #2 - Domino's Pizza
This was surprising. We've been ordering food online for years. No one, grocery stores, food retailers, no one, spams up. We get the occasional piece from Omaha Steaks, but like VistaPrint, that is a known inconvenience.
We normally call Domino's, but with a laptop across my legs, I placed the order online. Thank goodness I had my secret weapon handy because Domino's spent June spamming us as well.
What Is This Secret Weapon?
I have been using a free service called Boxbe for several months. The site acts as a waypoint for email destined for your address. I
originally signed up so I could keep an email address in public and not see it pulverize my email box. Messages arrive and are either cleared (whitelisted) by you in advance, pass a challenge or sit in email purgatory waiting for your decision.When the mail from these two national merchants started (I don't mind an email with an offer, but a deluge is a bit much), I decided to keep track.
The winner of the SpamTooMuch contest in June?
It was a tie!
Domino's and MicroCenter each sent me six pieces of unwanted mail. I dont have the Domino's opt-in screen or permissions available so I may have agreed to something in mouseprint. As for MicroCenter, I answered a cashier's question. There was no disclosure, no opt in and certainly no agreement that MicroCenter would start writing me the day after I left their store and then send five more pieces.
Boxbe is free, and they're not paying me to share anything with our readers. I think they provide an amazing free service and have some smart people there who will undoubtedly be able to make money from advertising in some way. Boxbe works with Outlook and Yahoo Mail among others and is on our must-have list to keep aggressive merchants at bay.
Labels: Boxbe, Domino's, email, MicroCenter
1 Comments:-
Thanks for the write up and glad to see you like using Boxbe.
It's unfortunate that retailers resort to sending unwanted messages, but Boxbe is a perfect solution to that problem.
We're about to launch some big improvements to the site, so stay tuned for a newer, easier to use Boxbe in the next few weeks.
Cheers,
Randy Stewart
Boxbe Product Manager
randy@boxbe.com
By
randy@boxbe.com, at 6:00 PM
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