Jul 7, 2010
The offender was Paymex, a local New Zealand payment gateway provider that is sadly closing their doors - and bulk emailed an announcement all their customers without remembering to BCC all the addresses. Oops.
I haven't used their service for some time, so this announcement doesn't affect me, I read the announcement, deleted it, and carried on with my life.
However, not everyone was so contented and some people just had to start up a discussion.
Growl growl, coming from a privacy-concerned guy that publishes his email address in spam-harvester-friendly plain text on his website. By the way, I don't think Paymex will be all that upset about clients moving elsewhere, what with them closing down and all.
And then a couple more emails with a similar tone.
And then some words of wisdom...
So please do not REPLY to All as this is going to get out of control.
Exactly - at this point the BCC cockup has turned into a grand old discussion being sent back and forwards between a few hundred unwilling participants. Let's not make a bad situation worse right?
These emails are either Spam, Hoax, or the product of a very unprofessional organisation.
"Shocked". This guy kindly included a link to his website in this complaint about spam. It's not ok to mass email people out of the blue, but apparently it's fine to jump on the bandwagon once somebody else starts it.
And then someone having a crack at moving the discussion out of people's inboxes...
http://www.fuzion.co.nz/blog/2010/07/06/226/
Please note that we will not contact anyone directly as a result of posting on this blog.
Hopefully this will be the last e-mail to this group and anyone who wishes to discuss further can use the blog
Some people got the message but not everyone. This seemed like a perfectly logical option, but with a mailing list this size there are bound to be trolls lurking.
Like this one - who just regurgitated the sentiment that has already been shared, adding nothing to the discussion that nobody wants anyway.
Email address is personal information, sould not be discloursed to anyone else without the permission.
I will keep the right to take legal action.
Legal action is the answer to all the world's problems. Paymex's offence should not go unpunished, and I would see them condemned to slavery for sharing my email address.
Yep, spam the list, someone out there will be perfectly happy to explain what's going on!!!!!111111
Yes, a sentiment shared by many, though sadly the discussion continues.
At least be smart enough to make it a blind copy if you’re going to copy me in.
Better still just send your complaints direct to Paymex and leave me out.
Aaargh. Again, a valid point but meh, if I wanted a discussion I'd go troll a forum or something.
guys, stop REPLYING TO ALL !!!!
And the saga continues. I don't think this will be the last message. Again, meh.
Illustrations
Oh, in case the purpose of the illustration is lost on anyone, it's supposed to be a troll. You just can't trust trolls with email lists. If the illustration police want to point me at some good tutorials, I'd be most appreciative :)
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8 Comments
This is quite amusing, some people just cant help themselves, in the situation that was at hand Paymex did happen to screw this up, but by all means did there have to be such a pointless discussion? Some of the points were valid but should have been addressed with a proper response to Paymex, not X amount of people. Personally i think this would have been a common sense thing. Anyway, thats my 5 cents, again some of my comments are pointless(points out the obvious) however maybe im just as bad as the rest. Also, do you happen to draw your post images? Quite an artist if you do :D
it's nice to read everyone's comments,, for me it's ok.
Sorry if this seems insensitive, but does anyone else find this at least mildly amusing? People complaining about an organisation messing up is making the situation worse, which is then making more people complain, which is then making things even worse! haha, I'm sorry but this amused me
This article seems scarily apt considering what Eric Schmidt said today about social media sites being bad for privacy. Yet he is behind Google Buzz that just added people from your address book without your permission, and showed everyone your address book! Ironic....
This is really very nice.
Really good source of information.What wondered me is the name of the blog..really creative and genius to think that.
That last guy was the true genius in the bunch :)