Bridgetopics

[Finch]

I don't know about Wayne, but I believe that Frances is, or was, the editor of her county bridge association's magazine. That might explain why she got onto a "bridge press" list.

 

 

Not the email address that was used. The newsletter address does get assorted adverts/press releases, though as it's not give online anywhere, it doesn't do too badly spamwise.

 

I didn't much mind getting the first email, which said something like "we're only going to send one email, then stop" even though I was surprised at the address they used (it was my work email address, which I freely admit a lot of bridge players know and use, but isn't used on the internet or bulletin boards). It was the additional mails. But it sounds as if they (may have) had either some technical screw-up or a rush of over-enthusiasm.

[Cascade]

On the contrary, I have read and fully understood your posts, I suspect I have understood more about them than you have told us. In the meantime, I note that instead of acknowledging that your response might have naive and over the top, you not only repeated your original post, but added "and quite possibly illegally" and "It does not leave me feeling that they are a reputable business with honest intentions." as well. Doesn't matter to me, we who read these forums are well aware of your white hat/black hat view of the world and expect this. Read Frances's post for an example of a more mature response to the same issue.

 

Here is one of the (several) posts where you told us you emailed them twice:

 

 

 

I suggest to you that if you seriously expected a response, you would have asked someone who has a more nuanced view of the world, or perhaps someone with excellent people-skills to compose your emails. An outraged email from Sir Wayne the doer of good deeds, on a crusade to rid the world of the totally evil, and without redeeming features, bridgetopics, is unlikely to get a response. The people you have cast in the black hat role don't know that they are evil, they think they are regular human beings like everyone else. So, to send a series of emails which assumes that they are the source of wickedness in the world (you see, I have understood more from your posts than you thought!) is unlikely to produce the response you wanted.

 

Anyway, I know this post won't change anyone's behaviour, so I think that after all Roger had the best idea.

 

Do you have a leak on my email that you have formed those opinions of them?

 

I suspect not since it does not seem likely that you have read them.

 

This is the entire content of the first email

 

"Can you please tell me where you got my email address from?

 

Thanks"

 

and the follow up email

 

"Hi

 

Two months and no reply.

 

Can you please inform me why I received spam from your business?"

 

There is no assumption of "a source of wickedness" and no evidence of outrage in those emails. In fact the brief content in those emails is the antithesis of your assumptions.

 

They simply have not had the courtesy to respond.

 

Perhaps you think that their spam policy to attract new business is acceptable perhaps you think that ignoring responses from those they chose to spam is acceptable.

 

I happen to not think so. I imagine that a majority or at least a very significant minority consider spam unacceptable.

 

I would be happy to hear from Jan or Eric or the others involved in this process with an explanation for their behaviour. I have certainly given them plenty of opportunity to explain. They have chosen not to. Therefore when someone asks for a recommendation about their business I will give my opinion based on the way that they have chosen to treat me and others they have spammed. After all that is the primary source of information that I have about them.

 

Maybe you think their behaviour is acceptable. Maybe you think that Roger et al being rude to me for expressing my opinion is acceptable.

I happen to find neither acceptable nor reasonable.

 

I hope that you would think that my response to bridgetopics shown above was reasonable and polite. I hope that you would think that their marketing behaviour and lack of response to those reasonable emails are not reasonable approaches to business.

 

As I said I would be happy for Jan or someone else from bridgetopics to contact me. Indeed I would welcome it. Given that the responded to Fred within a day I was hopeful that my two efforts to contact them yesterday would have met with a favourable response. But alas there is nothing in my inbox.

 

Given that it has taken three months without a response I won't be holding my breath for a response. In the meantime as word of mouth works if I am asked about my opinion of their organization I will give details of my very negative experience in my dealings or lack there of with them.

[helene_t]

A shame that nobody comments on the quality of the content, whether it is worth the money. I can't get exited about unsolicited emails. Happens all the time.

[CSGibson]

I have learned in this thread that I don't have as much trouble deleting e-mails as other people do.

 

I have not learned whether anyone has any opinions as to the content of the website, which was the original question before everything got sidetracked. Alas.

[mycroft]

I have no trouble deleting emails (and have no dog in this fight, having not to my knowledge received one).

 

But I do tend to agree with Cascade in two points:

- if you send me unsolicited business email, I'm not using your service, no matter how good it is, because 20 years on from Cantor and Siegel, people should know that that is the kind of advertising not to try. *Especially* if they send one "advertising" email, *stating that it will be the only email they will send to me*, and then do it again.

- if I believe that the company doing this is legitimate, and possibly unfamiliar with netiquette, I will ask if they meant to do this, and if so, why it was a bad idea. I have, in the past, from said companies, got "oops, thanks" or the equivalent (sometimes the traditional passive voice-non-apology "we're sorry you felt that way about our business"). If it's not legit, I *always* get "no response" - and probably more emails now that they know the address is valid.

 

In other words, they did something scam artists do, and when Cascade pointed this out and asked why, they did something else scam artists do. They may not *be* scam artists - I highly doubt with the names given that they are! - but having that appearance isn't good for them, as can be seen here.

[kenberg]

I have learned in this thread that I don't have as much trouble deleting e-mails as other people do.

 

I have not learned whether anyone has any opinions as to the content of the website, which was the original question before everything got sidetracked. Alas.

 

I had become aware of the site before, visited it, and decided no thanks. in response to this thread, I re-visited. I still have not joined. As near as I could get it, the sample, which was supposed to be on support doubles, seemed to be a video with comments about the Buffet cup, some comments about the site, how good it will be and so on. I am open to considering it but I think that I do need some substantial opportunity to try it out first. I have a lot of bridge stuff. Books, cds, some Bridgemaster deals, etc. This site so far hasn't tempted me to add them in.

 

Your friend that recommended it: What features were attractive to him/her? I haven't ruled it out, rather I looked briefly and moved on.

 

I doubt this reply much helps the OP, but I thought I would post it for whatever the bridgetopics folks might find useful in it. Yes, bridge advice from Rodwell is of interest. Obviously.

[gnasher]

When I looked at the sample, I got an article by Rodwell on Support Doubles.

[dustinst22]

When I looked at the sample, I got an article by Rodwell on Support Doubles.

 

Same, good article.

[kenberg]

ok, i probably didn't give it enough thought. Still, if they want my business, they need to make it more user friendly for klutzes like me.

[the hog]

Spamming is poor business practise, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with deleting unwanted email. Look at the disreputable spam emails you get attempting to sell you dodgy things. Would you buy a used car from these men?

[mtvesuvius]

The unthinkable has happened: I agree with the hog!

[blackshoe]

Deliberate spamming is one thing. Screwing up is something else.

[the hog]

And using screwing up as an excuse for spamming is something else again. How can you innocently spam? Please!

[blackshoe]

I didn't say someone who spams is "innocent", I said he's not necessarily as guilty as someone who does it deliberately.

[the hog]

I didn't say someone who spams is "innocent", I said he's not necessarily as guilty as someone who does it deliberately.

 

Is that the same as being somewhat pregnant?

I ask again, how can you innocently spam someone?

[blackshoe]

I write a piece of software to send a message to certain people. There's a bug in the software. It sends the message multiple times. Okay, I'm a lousy programmer. But I didn't spam anyone on purpose.

[Cascade]

I write a piece of software to send a message to certain people. There's a bug in the software. It sends the message multiple times. Okay, I'm a lousy programmer. But I didn't spam anyone on purpose.

 

I am pretty certain that this is not what happened with bridgetopics.

 

1. A reasonable person who made such a mistake would make some effort to apologize for their actions. bridgetopics have made no such apology.

 

2. A reasonable person who made such a mistake and was contacted by someone affected would respond in reasonable time. bridgetopics have not responded to emails sent to them from me over the past three plus months. I did receive one response yesterday to one of the four emails that I have sent to them. That response answered none of the three specific questions that I asked of them. It seemed like a standard form response with some similar themes to Fred's response earlier in this thread, although it did address me by name but was in other ways impersonal in that it was not signed by any of their staff. It did not acknowledge any of my other emails that they have not responded to.

 

3. As with Frances in my case the email address that bridgetopics was used is not my primary personal email account. This address was harvested in some manner. It seems to me absent evidence to the contrary that my email address was added to their database by someone using their personal contacts or contacts from some other purpose (perhaps I once sent an email to one of these people on some unrelated matter) or that someone actively found publically available email addresses to send to. Possibly there is some other reason that I have not thought of however bridgetopics have resisted answering my reasonable request to tell me where they obtained my email address.

 

It seems to me that bridgetopics have not acted in a reasonable way with their promotional emails and that they continue to not act in a reasonable way by not responding to questions.

[gnasher]

I am pretty certain that this is not what happened with bridgetopics.

Me too. It's far more likely to be something like this:

 

I have a piece of software on my PC. It's designed for manipulating numbers, but I decide to use it for managing mailing lists.

 

I get a list of email addresses from somewhere, and I send them all an email. I don't think of checking the list for duplicates, so I end up emailing a few people twice.

 

I get another list of email addresses from somewhere else. I try to remove from this list anyone who was in the first list. However, I'm using the wrong piece of software, and I'm not very good at using it, and I don't understand that "joe.bloggs@gmail.com", "joe.bloggs@gmail.com ", "joe.bloggs@googlemail.com", "Joe Bloggs [joe.bloggs@gmail.com]", "Joe Bloggs <joe.bloggs@gmail.com>" will all go to the same address but will not be treated as equivalent by my software. As a result, I end up emailing some people a second time.

 

Later I get a third list of addresses. I match it against the first list, but I forget to match it against the second. A few people who were in the second list get emailed again.

 

Somebody complains about having been emailed twice. I realise that I'd forgotten to match the third list against the second. To avoid making the same mistake again, I combine all three lists into one.

 

Somebody else asks me where I got their email address from. When I combined the lists into one, it didn't occur to me that I might need to know where an address came from, so all I have is a list of addresses without anything to indicate the source of each address. I know I've got the original lists somewhere, but they were sent to me as email attachments, so they're buried in my inbox somewhere. I put it on my "To Do" list.

 

I'm part of a small, owner-managed startup with a new product to launch and no support staff, and I have many responsibilities besides e-marketing. I have a million things to do, so it stays on my "To Do" list for longer than it should. After a while, I realise that I've left it so long that it would be embarrassing to contact the enquirer, and anyway I think they've probably forgotten about it. So I do too.

[helene_t]

could some moderator please delete all posts in this thread that do not address the OP question, namely whether BT is worth the costs? Then those who like to discuss direct-marketing ethics can take their discussion to some business ethics site, or to the water cooler.

[inquiry]

could some moderator please delete all posts in this thread that do not address the OP question, namely whether BT is worth the costs? Then those who like to discuss direct-marketing ethics can take their discussion to some business ethics site, or to the water cooler.

 

 

This is a very reasonable request. However, it takes considerable time to weed through the post and move them around, and some post have both kinds of content (where would they go). Worse, if we start moving post and splitting threads that is all we would end up doing. I could also delete a rude post while I was at it, but then I have to do something with all the post that refer to the rude post -- not all of them are in this thread by the way. But maybe, just maybe your post and my reply will get this thread back on topic.

 

As far as the site goes, I am not paying that kind of money for a once monthly newletter on topics that we have discussed to death here (of course, the content there is probably much more professional than what was discussed here). Now if they showed a lot of interesting hands... well that would be different. I would pay a lot for that.

[qwery_hi]

could some moderator please delete all posts in this thread that do not address the OP question, namely whether BT is worth the costs? Then those who like to discuss direct-marketing ethics can take their discussion to some business ethics site, or to the water cooler.

 

Deleting history is often a bad idea. It makes it difficult for a new user reading the thread to understand what's going on, and makes the life of moderators very hard. The way some forums deal with this problem is to by default not show posts that have a certain number of downvotes (4 for example). User interested in reading these posts would click an 'expand' button, but they would be warned that some number of forum users thought these posts are not worth the time to read.

 

As a stopgap, perhaps BBO could implement a feature where a moderator downvote would hide a post but not delete it. The assumption being this would not be too difficult for the moderators.

[nige1]

Well, they sent me one unsolicited email saying "this is the only unsolicited email we are going to send you, look at our site" Then they sent me another 3 unsolicited emails. Then I added them to my spam senders list.I don't know where they got my email address from, but I wish they hadn't. I have no idea what the content is like, but you can see why I haven't given them any money!

Uhuh, the "technical problems" excuse for spam.

I think the intent was to excuse not replying to the complaints. Jan seems to be claiming that they never send any spam in the first place, only the opt-in newsletters. So either he's clueless about what's going on in his organization, he's lying, or a third party was sending this spam about his site without their knowledge.

Spamming is poor business practise, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with deleting unwanted email. Look at the disreputable spam emails you get attempting to sell you dodgy things. Would you buy a used car from these men?

The unthinkable has happened: I agree with the hog!

Is that the same as being somewhat pregnant? I ask again, how can you innocently spam someone?

I am pretty certain that this is not what happened with bridgetopics.

1. A reasonable person who made such a mistake would make some effort to apologize for their actions. bridgetopics have made no such apology.

2. A reasonable person who made such a mistake and was contacted by someone affected would respond in reasonable time. bridgetopics have not responded to emails sent to them from me over the past three plus months. I did receive one response yesterday to one of the four emails that I have sent to them. That response answered none of the three specific questions that I asked of them. It seemed like a standard form response with some similar themes to Fred's response earlier in this thread, although it did address me by name but was in other ways impersonal in that it was not signed by any of their staff. It did not acknowledge any of my other emails that they have not responded to.

3. As with Frances in my case the email address that bridgetopics was used is not my primary personal email account. This address was harvested in some manner. It seems to me absent evidence to the contrary that my email address was added to their database by someone using their personal contacts or contacts from some other purpose (perhaps I once sent an email to one of these people on some unrelated matter) or that someone actively found publically available email addresses to send to. Possibly there is some other reason that I have not thought of however bridgetopics have resisted answering my reasonable request to tell me where they obtained my email address.

It seems to me that bridgetopics have not acted in a reasonable way with their promotional emails and that they continue to not act in a reasonable way by not responding to questions.

The comments on Bridgetopics by Frances, Cascade, Cherdano, Barmar, The Hog, and mtvesuvius are as informative and relevant as any others in helping BBOers to assess the site. All that Cascade has requested from Bridgetopics is a reply to simple questions.

[Cascade]

The comments on Bridgetopics by Frances, Cascade, Cherdano, Barmar, The Hog, and mtvesuvius are as informative and relevant as any others in helping BBOers to assess the site. All that Cascade has requested from Bridgetopics is a reply to simple questions.

 

I received a reply from BridgeTopics on 22 January.

 

They did not answer any of my questions.

 

Their email finished with "Please do contact us if you have more questions"

 

I replied to their email with this simple text

 

"You have not answered any of my questions.

 

Is it possible to get an answer to those questions?"

 

I have not had a response.

[bluecalm]

My complaint about them is that I have no clue what kind of articles are in there.

Support double one is really basic and I am not interested in that kind of stuff. On the other hand Gazilli by Lauria could be interesting for me but there is no way to evaluate if it's advanced/detailed stuff or again something aimed more to beginners/intermediate players.

[nige1]

Some spammers rely on the adage "All publicity is good publicity".