Hi friends,
Thank you to all who responded to my posting about the issue of our contact
information being lifted from the list. It seems most of us, or at least
those of you I have heard from, agree we don't want this information
lifted from the list for an unsolicited e-mail without our
permission. I get the same feeling when I discover some company
I do business with has given my contact information to another without my
permission. Besides our objection to the mailbox clutter I think the main
fear is of being ripped off. Experience tells us most of the
time SPAM equals scam. In a perfect world there would be no SPAM, only
honest offers with honest intentions. Since this isn't a perfect world,
and most of the time we don't have any knowledge of the person/business sending
us the e-mail, we consider it a scam. Given the many
examples we hear about in the news today of rip offs and public
opinion being what it is in regard to SPAM, I consider soliciting someone
via private e-mail useless for good vendors.
That being said, I do think one of the objectives of our list needs to
be to unite honest vendor with needy customer. As I have shared with
some of you I belong to ten or more mailing list, two of which allow
vendors to make postings of specials they may be running or new inventory in
exchange for a monetary contribution to the list. When kept in check this
seems to work well for all involved and helps to keep things honest, if nothing
else in fear of negative feedback. It also helps keep customers up to date
on newly available items that may have been recently reproduced. I can't
speak for everyone, but I must be honest and say I have not contributed
monetarily to the IML as I should. Perhaps this would help with list cost
when some of us forget to help.
Thank you,
David Whitfield
|