Spam from Smith Micro

[Rhoel]

One of the frustrations of commerce is spam. When subscribing for product news which you think is for updates or bug fixes, you leave yourself open to all manner of nuisance mail. So companies, quite rightly, are obliged to provide an easy means to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Smith Micro is no exception.

Tonight I received junk from Smith Micro, advertising Content Paradise products not related to ASP: Now I have no interest in receiving junk mail about crapware like SendStuffNow, only information relating to ASP products.

So I unsubscribed.

To my surprise, I get this

The following error has occured. Please try again.
{rhoel email}@gmail.com could not be found.

So I tried again, three times, each predictably ending in failure. This has seriously annoyed me: I'm again working late at 04:00 in the morning, and SM wasting my time generates expletives.

So three things:

• [1] Can Smith Micro restrict itself to sending product news customers sign up for.
  [2] If it can't and feels the need to spam its loyal customers, please make sure its software works - it is, after all, a software company and we wouldn't want to wrongfully gain the impression its a bug house.
  [3] Employ staff who can spell -"occured" has more than 1 "r".

Rhoel

[PRIMAL MORON]

So three things:

• [1] Can Smith Micro restrict itself to sending product news customers sign up for.
  [2] If it can't and feels the need to spam its loyal customers, please make sure its software works - it is, after all, a software company and we wouldn't want to wrongfully gain the impression its a bug house.
  [3] Employ staff who can spell -"occured" has more than 1 "r".

Rhoel

You asked a question,
So prepare for an answer!

1. Smith Micro shouldn't be spamming you, but that doesn't mean they can't... Like all companies, Smith Micro is a business, and signing up for a newsletter/rss feed/other means of electronic information kinda falls under "use at your own risk" category.
Just like certain softwares, there are "agreements" that you are told to follow in order to use that service/program/whatever. They could be holding you to it like a contract, but that depends if such an agreement exists for the service.
I'm not saying that makes it right, at all. What I am saying, is that this is "just business" according to most companies.
On the other hand, It could be an error they overlooked with the service, if they misspelled a simple word, who knows what else could have gotten overlooked...
2. I fully agree with you on this. When ASP 7 was being ordered for me via download, we encountered a problem, and we called SM. We got a call back from someone from SM with terrible computer skills, she not only linked us to the wrong page, but the wrong site. Talk about poor service...
The point of that is that smith micro does need to check everything within reason before sending it out. I don't think SM has a very good reputation right now, but it could be worse, the Anime Studio rights could be bought be a large corporation that could shelve it for good.
3. Mistakes happen, sometimes I misspell too, but if a boss fired 1 person for every little mistake they made, we would be savage beasts in the wild, fighting for survival right now.

I agree with you, but unless if you try to contact SM or the Geek Squad, there is little you can do...

That's all for now.

[F.M.]

I have an idea: why don't we all pool 10 bucks a piece and buy Moho/AS back from Smith/Micro and have Mike develop the program the way we want it, without the bugs and the bloated download, and excise the poser related garbage.

[jwlane]

If you buy a product from a typical corporation, you also have to buy a part of that corporation's debt. Everything is leveraged. Part of this started as a way to protect a company from hostile takeovers. It's easier to take over a public company that is debt free. They also want cash that is uncommitted to assets, so there is more for executive compensation. Indeed, several more big U.S. newspaper would be in fine financial shape it they weren't paying off the debt that conglomerates borrowed to buy the paper.

Jump on open source software while the bigger corporations (bigger than SmithMicro) allow it to live.

[chucky]

I love this idea that business 'people' have that one off trade gives them some kind of right to stalk you- persistently.

And if you don't like it you'll have to ask then to stop.
Charming.
"Shoo away butcher man, we already got a steak," As he follows me down the street, "No we don't want you're livers!"
It's embarrassing, a big grown up company acting like a street kid selling tikis.
Now they try even to do it at the mall, you buy a t shirt, next thing you know ...spam- even though you paid cash. surprise- we got more t-shirts!
If we made the purchase before being spammed that surely proves we don't need it, I'm not going back to the t-shirt spammers, cos their marketing insults me, not just because their t shirts are to expensive and crap .
In fact, the more a company spams, the less like I will be to continue as their customer- unless of course their product is absolutely undeniably awesome.... huh.

It's easier to take over a public company that is debt free.

I love this anecdote, it's a great indication of where our world is at.

[chucky]

Indeed, several more big U.S. newspaper would be in fine financial shape it they weren't paying off the debt that conglomerates borrowed to buy the paper.

This happened with one of the major television stations in Aus.
Common thread there maybe?
After paying inflated prices with funds that hadn't been raised, the company's interest payments were greater than their entire production budget.

You can imagine what this does to the content.