Spammed By Pocket Gear

[Ed Hansberry]

I have been a <b>HUGE</b> proponent of Peanut Press, which became Palm Digital Media and most recently <a href="http://www.ereader.com">eReader.com</a> under the ownership of Palm Gear, which is all wrapped up with <a href="http://www.powerbyhand.com/businessunits/index.html">PowerByHand</a>, and that includes Pocket Gear.<br /><br />My email address is now in all of their databases as a result of the merger and they have taken it on themselves to email me and probably thousands of other customers with their latest deals. :evil: I have never, to my knowledge, purchased from Pocket Gear before - no record exists in Microsoft Money for them and I have no account info set up in eWallet either. They know I have a Pocket PC because my eReader account has "Pocket PC" as my preference. Strangely enough, they didn't pick up my notification preference which is set to "None." That means, no unsolicited email for those in PowerByHand's marketing department.<br /><br /> :spam: <br /><br />Of course, they don't <i>mean</i> to spam me. :roll: "You are a valued PocketGear.com customer. Our intention is never to send SPAM to you through e-mail. Our goal is to pass along valuable discounts and share quality applications with our customers." Well, hey. Those guys pitching inexpensive Viagra or ultra-low home mortage rates aren't spamming either. Those are "valuable discounts" too, right?<br /><br />Free clue PowerByHand - passing along "valuable discounts" and "sharing quality applications" unsolicited to your customer base is the definition of spam! And the sad thing is, it works. Enough people will click on the links and buy a few apps that will make the campaign a success, encouraging them to do it again.<br /><br />It isn't like they didn't have an opportunity let me know of the relationship with Pocket Gear and eReader.com. I am subscribed to two eReader newsletters and they could have put an innocuous paragraph in there about these valuable discounts with their partner, but that probably wouldn't have generated the hits they were looking for. I would have been inclined to click on such a link to browse. When I find a company I like, I try to give them as much business as possible, both in the real world and on the internet. Spam like this though sends me running into the hands of their competitors when it comes to software purchases for my Pocket PC.

[Lex]

I just unsubscribed from the same valuable email.

If I get another one I might sign up the contact email on their website for some valuable offers which PocketGear/PowerByHand wouldn't want to miss.

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Completely inexcusable and very unprofessional. I can understand if your registration with Peanut Press including you wanting to receive offers from their partners, but that was obviously not the case...

[joelevi]

SpamBayes... That's all ya gotta do.

Set up a Baysian filter to take care of their crap. I filter about 300 spams a day with about 99% accuracy.

Some of these spams come from PocketGear, Handango, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I see nary a one! :: Bliss ::

Once and a while I go in and check to see who's sending me spam... and then I don't buy from them, I'll buy from somewhere else, even if it means spending a couple more bucks.

Anyone know of a Bayesian filter for Pocket Outlook? :mrgreen:

[rlobrecht]

I got one, too, but luckily Outlook 2003 recognized it as spam.

I love PeanutPress. Hopefully this isn't a taste of what is to come of them being owned by those guys.

[Jason Lee]

I was kinda wondering why all of a sudden I was getting crap from pocket gear. I have purchased from them before (looong ago) and declined their emails then. I get three copies a month of their valued news... :evil:

I have heard other bad things that pocket gear has done to people who sell their software there. I haven't shopped there for a long time and after all this I don't plan on it ever again.

[griph]

I was kinda wondering why all of a sudden I was getting crap from pocket gear. I have purchased from them before (looong ago) and declined their emails then. I get three copies a month of their valued news... :evil:

I have heard other bad things that pocket gear has done to people who sell their software there. I haven't shopped there for a long time and after all this I don't plan on it ever again.

Me too! :-( I have now selected the 'Remove Me' from the bottom of the Special Offers email so hopefully I wont continue to get them!

[surur]

This must be the increased marketing the promised their developers when they increased their rates.

Actually I would not really call it spam if a legitimate company e-mails me. The most important thing is that the e-mail address is real and traceable, and the un-subscribe request is honoured. Its also nice that it is accurately directed ie sent to some-one who would actually buy pocketpc software.

In any case, we all know that an e-mail list is actually an asset of a company, and when they get sold off this is also sold off to the highest bidder, irrespective of their previous policies. Lets hope no one ever buys amazon.com

Surur

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

Actually I would not really call it spam if a legitimate company e-mails me. The most important thing is that the e-mail address is real and traceable, and the un-subscribe request is honoured. Its also nice that it is accurately directed ie sent to some-one who would actually buy pocketpc software.
Hmmm... if a "legitimate" company is sending me email that is unsolicited, that means another entity sent them my information without my permission. At that point, since its likely that you never even registered with this company sending you unsolicited email, there is little that stops them from sharing your email address with THEIR partners or selling the email information they have to other services (since they wouldn't have any email preferences on file from you). It can all multiply rather quickly. All it takes is one irresponsible party.

For that reason, I have to consider spam to cover all unsolicited email, regardless of the company sending it.

[beq]

I too was wondering why I got the PocketGear email in my ebooks newsletter folder (sent to my PDM email address)...

[alexm]

SpamBayes... That's all ya gotta do.

Set up a Baysian filter to take care of their crap. I filter about 300 spams a day with about 99% accuracy.

Some of these spams come from PocketGear, Handango, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. I see nary a one! :: Bliss ::

Once and a while I go in and check to see who's sending me spam... and then I don't buy from them, I'll buy from somewhere else, even if it means spending a couple more bucks.

Anyone know of a Bayesian filter for Pocket Outlook? :mrgreen:

I agree! I think the only way out from this is filtering!

[mightymission]

calm down-it's an email. hit the delete key and relax already.

[PresBry]

I dunno you guys. I agree generally and in principal with what you're saying about SPAM. But, I get these same offers, and I like 'em! I guess I'd be more critical of the mailings if they didn't concern my favorite thing in the world...POCKET PCs!

They always manage to have 30% off some program I have been wanting, and waiting to buy.

I guess I'm part of the problem.

[Jason Lee]

Oh I don't mind the content... I like to see what software prices are droping or a new version of my favorite program. But I didn't ask for this one. I haven't unsubscribed yet. I like to see what they have. Then if I like it I will go over to handango to buy it. Very rarely do handango and pocket gear have diferent prices.
I have never really liked pocket gear anyway. The site doesn't look as professional as handango. Handango reminds me of amazon for pocket pc software. :) I think I have only shopped at pocket gear once and I think it was because of a discount code I had.

I will probably unsubscribe but I don't care too much.. they still have my old hotmail address that I use for spam. lol

[ricksfiona]

I just unsubscribed from the same valuable email.

If I get another one I might sign up the contact email on their website for some valuable offers which PocketGear/PowerByHand wouldn't want to miss.

I was just thinking the same thing :)

[Saxmoore]

I think some of you are missing a major point, here...

They know I have a Pocket PC because my eReader account has "Pocket PC" as my preference. Strangely enough, they didn't pick up my notification preference which is set to "None." That means, no unsolicited email for those in PowerByHand's marketing department.

The fact is, he had opted out of marketing emails for Peanut Press. However, Power By Hand chose to ignore his preference. It's not the first time that one website has been bought by another, and the privacy preferences of the first weren't honored.

Sax

[maximus]

If these companies are under one umbrella -- i.e. powerbyhand, then it is lawful to send (a responsible number of) emails to all the database that they currently own, as long as there is an easily spottable 'unsubscribe' link, and the unsubscribing process is executed within a reasonable period of time.

Our company recently purchased a korean bank, and I was involved in the management consolidation process. One of the things that we immediately did was downloading the korean bank's customer database, and send them information email regarding the change of the bank's ownership, bank's logo, headquarter address, etc. etc., that service will be provided as usual, your account is save with us, etc. etc. and at the bottommost section of the email, we put a link to our investment/mutual fund products that are immediately become available to them as the result of the acquisition, and of course a link to unsubscribe. We sent a total of approximately 2.9 million emails that day.

At the end of the day, it is all just business. We need new customers, we sent 1 email to each of the korean bank's customers, and we get result. A little bit tasteless, but it works.

[Ed Hansberry]

If these companies are under one umbrella -- i.e. powerbyhand, then it is lawful to send (a responsible number of) emails to all the database that they currently own, as long as there is an easily spottable 'unsubscribe' link, and the unsubscribing process is executed within a reasonable period of time.

I never said what they did wasn't legal. Back before recent anti-spam legislation, most of spam was legal. The act of spamming was legal. Some spamming is still legal.

It's still spam.

[Sully]

Ditto to everything.

[DaleReeck]

Spam is really starting to pi$$ me off. I have a "backup" MSN email account for when I go on the road, that sort of thing. I usually check it once a month since its not my main mail provider. In 30 days, I got over 1000 spam messages - over 30 a day. Actually, my main account is as bad though I don't notice it as much since I check it often. Fortunately, I never give out my work email, so that one has remained spam-free. But that MSN account was unbelievable.

Enough! Something has to be done with these sleezebag spammers. Congress said they aren't goig to have a national "do not spam" list, similar to the "do not call" lists for telemarketers. They said spammers might be sleezebags and use the list illegally to get emails for spamming even more.

I wonder if class action suits woulkd work. A $billion dollar judgment in favor of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of plantiffs might make a dent. Unfortunately, many spammers operate overseas and are out of the reach of US law and/or aren't hounded as much by their host governments :evil:

When spamming gets so bad that servers around the world crash due to being clogged with this garbage, then maybe something hard core will be done against spammers.

[Pony99CA]

OK, first, I agree that eReader should honor Ed's preferences. However, is eReader spamming Ed? He didn't say so.

Second, if eReader is (now?) affiliated with PocketGear, I can understand sharing E-mail lists. Ed had a business relationship with eReader, and so PocketGear might be able to piggyback off of that. It's not like PocketGear is some fly-by-night spammer that is sharing E-mail lists with all of its "partners" (basically any other spamming losers).

Also, if eReader and/or PocketGear have privacy policies, you should probably read them. If they don't have them, they should. If they aren't following their privacy policies, then that's a bigger issue.

Third, since PocketGear is a legitimate company, I think people who don't want their E-mail should just try the unsubscribe link. I can understand not unsubscribing from the fly-by-night spammers, who will just use the unsubscribe as confirmation that you exist and spam you from five other places, but that isn't the case here.

Finally, I don't really mind these offers too much, as long as they aren't excessive (more than once a week or so). I get them from Handango and PocketGear, and it's E-mail I don't really mind because it's Pocket PC-related.

So, to net it out, I can understand why Ed doesn't like it, but -- in this case -- just try unsubscribing if you don't like it. If that doesn't work, then the problem is much bigger.

Steve

[PPCRules]

OK, first, I agree that eReader should honor Ed's preferences. However, is eReader spamming Ed? He didn't say so.

Second, if eReader is (now?) affiliated with PocketGear, I can understand sharing E-mail lists. Ed had a business relationship with eReader, and so PocketGear might be able to piggyback off of that.

If it's legit to share E-mail lists, then it's only appropriate to share the preference as well, and then to honor them.

Third, since PocketGear is a legitimate company, ...
This is the kind of thing that takes a company out of the 'legitimate' category, IMO.

In defense of PocketGear, it may have been just some gungho rookie making a decision they shouldn't have been making anyway, and might not reflect the company's intended business practices as a whole. Whether there is any statement/apology by the company should determine which it is.

[Pony99CA]

OK, first, I agree that eReader should honor Ed's preferences. However, is eReader spamming Ed? He didn't say so.

Second, if eReader is (now?) affiliated with PocketGear, I can understand sharing E-mail lists. Ed had a business relationship with eReader, and so PocketGear might be able to piggyback off of that.
If it's legit to share E-mail lists, then it's only appropriate to share the preference as well, and then to honor them.
Then what's the point of sharing E-mail lists? If PocketGear couldn't send any E-mail out to those people, what good is the list? I assume that PocketGear is trying to get new customers by piggybacking off of eReader's list, so they really can't honor the preferences of eReader users. (Yes, I know they could still send to the people who hadn't opted out, but what percentage is that?)

We can argue that it might have been better to send an E-mail explaining that PocketGear is affiliated with eReader and is now using their mailing list, then tell people they could subscribe by clicking a link, but most companies don't seem to like opt-in for obvious reasons.

Even if they did, I bet that E-mail would still be called spam by some people. Also, it probably wouldn't have shown the discounts to give people an idea of what was offered.

As I said, if you don't want the E-mail, click the unsubscribe link. PocketGear still seems legitimate and I suspect they will honor the request. If they don't, then I'll agree that they've become spammers.

Steve

[Mark from Canada]

I think that since they are all one big happy company now, the addresses can flow from one of their lists to the other one.
I agree that they should have honored the preference to not get any marketing e-mail though. I have seen from other companies a single e-mail that said something along the lines..."We are now one company - click here to get our newsletter/offering..." and they don't bother you after it if you don't click it.
As long as I have done business with at least part of a company I think it's fair to get some info emailed - as long as the unsubscribe works!
I have gotten quite a few nice deals because of e-mails like this and I don't mind clicking on the occasional unsubscribe button.

Mark

[ChrisMPBH]

Hi All,

I wanted to take a quick moment to introduce myself. I am the Client Technology Product Manager for PowerByHand. PowerByHand now owns PocketGear.com, eReader.com (formerly palmdigitalmedia.com/peanutpress), and PalmGear.com. At the end of March, the company I was working for, Pinpoint Networks, merged with PowerByHand.

There is a lot of activity going on right now, as a result of the merger. And, as has been discussed on this thread, the various business units of PowerByHand have been unifying customer lists. This should be expected as we are now one company, not disjoint organizations. See our website www.powerbyhand.com for details on the merger.

Now, as to the emails that you have received from our various sites... With any merger such as this one, it can be extremely challenging to appropriately balance the communication with our user community. On the one hand, we want everyone to understand the impact of the merger, the expanded range of services and products available from the newly formed organization and on the other hand, we don't want to do it in a manner that is annoying and rude.

Unfortunately, the reality is that we will have people who feel we did not do an adequate job of informing them about impacts from the merger, while others will feel that we said too much. As I said before, it is a very difficult balance.

I hope that in the end, you'll find PowerByHand to be an honorable company with a sincere desire to provide the best customer service available in this industry.

Chris McClave
Client Technology Product Manager
PowerByHand

[Ed Hansberry]

Chris,

Thank you for your reply in this thread. :way to go:

I guess it just set me off knowing my preferences at PDM (now eReader) were for no notifications but my email address was used by another company within the PowerByHand family to send me unsolicited email.

I understand your desire for adequate notification of events going on and balancing that with customer's desires to be left alone.

That you took the time to come here and register to reply speaks volumes for me and I hope for the others in this thread that also were a bit annoyed having received the email. It says to me that it isn't a faceless company driven by marketing, it is someone trying to do the right thing for as many customers (internal and external) as possible.

[Jeff Rutledge]

Great reply Ed. I agree completely with your sentiments. :way to go: