We all receive spam emails from time to time, some more than most. I personally receive hundreds each day – most are caught by spam filters but many make it through. It’s an occupational hazard of having so many different domains.

However, one thing you can usually rely on is that when you receive a spam email offering some shoddy product or service, you won’t normally receive it again that day… and you certainly won’t receive any other emails from people who also received that spam.

Not so with an email that was sent yesterday on behalf of the website www.miamindmusic.com through the spam site grouplygroups.com though. I not only received the following spam email from them, but I have also received hundreds of follow up emails from people asking to be removed from the mailing list.

Have a read of the spam from this law breaking company:

From: em-8587008@grouply.com [mailto:em-8587008@grouply.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 11:25 AM
To: superstars@grouplygroups.com
Subject: [superstars] You’ve pressed your record – now what? MIA MIND MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT PROMOTION

You’ve pressed your record – now what? MIA MIND MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT PROMOTION

You’ve pressed your record – now what?

MIA MIND MUSIC

ENTERTAINMENT PROMOTION & MARKETING

• RADIO PROMOTION
• PRESS COVERAGE
• RECORD DISTRIBUTION
• INTERNET SERVICES
• ADVERTISING

(212) 564-4611
MiMiMus@aol.com
www.MiaMindMusic.com

FREE consultation!
Mia Mind Music – we’re keeping you buzzed!

Reply via web | Reply to sender | To reply to group use “Reply to all”
View full conversation (9 messages) | Start new conversation

View member profiles | Visit group
Want to stop these emails? Unsubscribe Create your own group!

As you can see, pretty useless as an email and irrelevant to me, and most recipients no doubt. What’s worse is the fact that it was sent to an email address that I do not use, and have never used, for a domain that is completely irrelevant to the subject of the email – so I clearly never signed up or joined any group.

The real comedy, or tradegy – depending on your take, comes from the many, many emails I have since received from people wanting to be removed from the list. You see, whenever someone replies to the spam, their email is also sent to every single person on the list, generating a whole swathe of self replicating spam.

Here are some of the more printable responses to the spam from GrouplyGroups.com and Mia Mind Music:

What IS THIS… ? Stop sending please. What is this spam?

Pretty annoyed there, then there’s the short and sweet:

Remove me now!!!!!!!!

One person has even been really aggressive and to the point, but still without swearing:

Do you really think that loading my inbox up with the same whack ass email is going to bring you any business? How is it that you claim you are a good marketing company but don’t know being a nuisance is a turn off?

Someone else even tried politeness – but as you’ll see later this was a waste of time as well.

To whom it may concern,
Why am I receiving not only your promotional advertisement but requests from strangers to delete them from a mailing list that I have no knowledge of.

Finally I really feel for this guy because I have seen his previous two requests to be removed also come through.

Please RESPECT my 3rd request and take me off your email list

Now, while I have seen his two previous emails, and the hundreds of others, it seems that the imbeciles at GrouplyGroups.com haven’t seen them – if this email from Jackie Wright, who also replied to every single person on the list when she intended to just reply to the poor chap who’d asked three times to be removed, is anything to go by:

From: Jackie WRIGHT
superstars@grouplygroups.com

SIR, AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EMAIL YOU CAN OPT OUT. THERE IS A LINK THAT WILL MARK YOU MARK AS DO NOT MAIL. THIS IS THE FIRST REQUEST I HAVE SEEN…..IT WILL BE A FEW DAYS BEFORE I WILL BE GOING OVER THE DATABASE…SO QUICKEST WAY IS TO OPT OUT YOURSELF…VIA PHONE…JACKIE

Email marketing has, over the years, managed to clean up its act from the shady beginnings it once had. Many professional and respected companies use email marketing to offer new products and services to their clients, but only AFTER they have opted in – this company has not done that. They have ignored laws against sending spam emails and have repeatedly bombarded unsuspecting, and unwilling people with spam – hundreds of times a day.

If you want your company’s reputation shot down like Mia Mind Music then, by all means, use GrouplyGroups.com as well. Otherwise, use a reputable Internet marketing agency – one that doesn’t use spam and black hat tactics.

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My dispute with Halfords looks set to run and run, as my previous complaint against Halfords, dated July 7th, has only just been responded to. Last week I took the day off to wait for delivery of a CD player for the car, only for it to fail to turn up. I complained to Halfords with this email, and in the meantime the item did arrive (on July 8th, when I was in London for the A-Team screening) so I missed delivery.

Anyhow, the item has now been collected and installed in the car, despite my having to pay another £4.99 for a connector that I wasn’t informed about when I ordered the item from Halfords website.

I awaited their response from my last complaint before replying again, and it has just arrived. Here is what they said, count the excuses:

From: David Willis [mailto:David.Willis@halfords.co.uk] On Behalf Of Customer Services
Sent: 13 July 2010 16:05
To: Darren Jamieson
Subject: Re: FW: halfords.com – Order Received (ref ********)

Dear Darren Jamieson,

Thank you for your email. Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response, this has been due to an unusually high volume of written correspondence in recent weeks.

I am sorry to read that you have experienced issues with your online order. We regret to inform you that Halfords are undergoing a major warehouse relocation, consolidating 3 warehouses into 1. At this present time stock is being transferred from its original location to the new Distribution Centre and is being booked into to the correct location of picking and despatch. I apologise that due to this relocation your items were delayed within our system and we were unable to meet the advised delivery schedule.

This issue has been rectified and from your order information and DHL tracking information all items have now been delivered to your address.
As previously advised, Halfords have removed all delivery charges in relation to your order due to the inconvenience caused during your online transaction with Halfords. I can also confirm that the 5% discount was also honoured and actioned as per your correspondence with Customer Services. I will however escalate the order details to the correct team member to investigate why a call back was not given by the advisor in the time scale provided to advise you that this had indeed been actioned. The outcome of this action will be dealt with internally.

I would like to assure you that it is never our intention to cause distress or inconvenience to any of our customers and although mistakes do happen, we recognise that it is how they are dealt with which is important. I thank you for your patience in relation to this matter.

In reference to your compensation request, Halfords only compensate for actual losses and cannot consider your request for compensation reference a late delivery. As a company, we feel that it more productive and beneficial to address the issue and deal with the matter internally.

I appreciate this may not be the outcome you were expecting, however, please be assured that this matter has received my full attention and consideration. . It is only through feedback from our customers that we are able to identify areas where we are falling short of our customers’ expectations and can redress them.

Please accept my sincere apologies once again.

Yours sincerely

David Willis
Customer Contact Centre Supervisor
Halfords Ltd

Customer Services: 0845 057 9000
Web: www.halfords.com
Halfords Limited, Washford West, Redditch, Worcestershire. B98 0DE

Naturally, the fact they are moving warehouses doesn’t really concern me. It doesn’t explain why they failed to call me back or even notify me of the delay to delivery so I could cancel my day off, and it doesn’t explain why I had to pay more money again when I had the item installed at Halfords in Cheadle. So, here is my repost again.

Hi David

Thanks for your email, although again it was almost a week before I received a reply.

The items not arriving on the date I had specified was indeed inconvenient as I had taken a day off to wait in for them, and the day that they did arrive (July 8th) I was in London all day – hence why I selected July 7th for a delivery date. I was not advised that the delivery date would change (otherwise I could have cancelled my day off), and it seems a strange coincidence that the items were shipped hours after I emailed to complain. Perhaps the order was forgotten, or lost, until I reminded you?

However, they have arrived now and I have finally had the item installed at Halfords in Cheadle, Manchester. The staff were very helpful, and indeed quick at installing the item.

On the downside, I had to pay another £4.99 for a connector plug which I was not advised about when I placed the order on your website, despite running the ‘will this work with my car’ check. The fitter in the store mentioned that many customers are angry about this when they go in for fitting because the website never tells them about this connector, or even warns them that it may be necessary.

Perhaps your website should be updated to show this as you’re clearly angering a great many people by trapping them into another £5 purchase at the point of install after they have ordered from your website?

I’m sorry to hear that Halfords has suffered problems with moving its warehouse, but fail to see how that should affect customer orders, delivery dates or the inability to return phone calls. This seems to be nothing more than an excuse on your part.

I should also point out that the 5% reduction and the ‘free delivery’ were not added ‘due to the inconvenience caused’ as you put it. I originally had the 5% discount, plus the free delivery, when I placed the order several weeks ago on 22nd June, and have a text message confirmation to prove this (two messages actually). The failure of your website to process the order meant I was forced to try again, and again, and again, receiving a variety of unhelpful error messages before phoning up to place the order – where the original order price was finally honoured.

So, as you can see I haven’t received anything for my ‘inconvenience’, and have indeed had to pay more again due to the non disclosure of the website with regards to parts required. Perhaps you could look at this again… I’ll await your response.

Let’s see what they say next time.

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My attempts to place an order on the Halfords website have taken an unfortunate turn for the worse, in what should really have been a straightforward transaction. As I reported previously, the problems with the website and the shoddy response times from their customer service department have meant that I have struggled to order a simple CD player for my car – and things do not appear to have improved.

I phoned Halfords myself on June 30th and explained the issues with their site, and how their customer service department had failed to reply. I spoke to a chap named Amaad, who promised that I could place the order normally and he would make the change so that I could have the previously offered 5% discount, and that I could pay online (as I had previously attempted to do). I placed the order, and then phoned him back to give him the order number – and he said he would amend it and get back to me to confirm it had been done. I of course recorded this phone call, so can prove this if necessary.

No problem, all is well. Except that the order should have arrived today, and it hasn’t. Also, when I attempt to use the order tracking on their website, I see a partially loaded page – as you can see from the screenshot, the code has not loaded properly. Their website STILL does not work.

So, no CD player has arrived, no way to track the order and some two weeks after originally trying to place an order, I’m still left unsure if it has even worked – despite receiving an order confirmation text, email and speaking to one of their customer service advisors and confirming he has the order. Their website says otherwise however.

In a last ditched attempt at salvaging this order, I have emailed Halfords once again… this is what I said:

*sigh*

I’m still awaiting delivery of my order, order reference #********

However, as delivery is supposed to be today (which is what I selected on your website) and I have stayed home ALL DAY to wait for it, I’m a little worried that firstly, it hasn’t turned up and secondly, when I enter my order number into the tracking section on your website the page only half loads and I get no information back.

I also did not receive a phone call from your customer service chap (Amaad) who said he would call me when he had adjusted the price for the free delivery and the 5% discount due to the myriad of problems I have already received in trying to order this damn product.

I also have not had a text or email to say that the item has been dispatched (as per the instruction on my order confirmation email), which perhaps explains why it is not here with me now when I have taken the day off for it to arrive.

This was the fifth and final attempt I am prepared to make to order this item from you. My blog post here explains my first few attempts  – and my subsequent blog post will detail how this is resolved, so choose your method of response wisely.

Perhaps you could explain a) why my item has not arrived, b) when it is likely to arrive so that I can sit around and wait for it once again and finally, c) whether you intend to compensate me for this shambolic experience I have had to endure in my attempts to place an order on your website?

I, and many others, await your response with interest.

Darren Jamieson

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I’ve had more than my fair share of problems with hosting companies over the years. Nothing will ever quite compare the morons at Fasthosts, who I have never used since in any capacity (for any company I have worked for) after they switched off one of my websites on a Friday afternoon and sodded off home for the weekend. But that rant is for another time, today I’d like to talk about 123-Reg – who I use for domain registrations.

I wanted to update my card details this month, a task which should have been fairly straight forward – except when I tried the form didn’t work, insisting there was something wrong with the card. After trying several times I contacted their customer support department where, had I known how utterly retarded they were, I wouldn’t have bothered. Here was my first message:

Account Owner
02/03/2010 17:07:54

I have tried several times to update my credit card details only to be told there is a problem with them. I know there is not because I use the card quite a lot, it’s a business card. I’m getting quite fed up with it and I have domains due in April.

Please sort this out because it’s very annoying.

What is also annoying is that when I went to submit this form it asked me for the ‘domain’… it’s not about a domain, it’s a billing question. No wonder your forms aren’t working properly, they haven’t been coded correctly.

So – not only did the credit card form not work, the support form insisted I reference a specific domain name when it clearly wasn’t about a domain. Some simple user testing wouldn’t go amiss on their website. I received a response from ‘Nick’.

Support Agent
Nick
02/03/2010 17:30:58

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 02nd March 2010.

I can confirm that the error message for your transaction is appearing because the billing address entered in your payment process does not match the address that your bank account is registered to. Please ensure that this matches when trying to make the payment again. Please note that stringent security checks are put in place on our payment processes for fraud prevention purposes. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Nick
123-reg

This was annoying – because their ‘address’ field consisted of a series of text boxes with address line 1, address line 2 etc on them – no real indication as to what fields were required. I attempted to clarify this with Nick.

Account Owner
02/03/2010 17:41:08

Thanks for the update

Could you point me in the right direction of what the fields ‘Address line 1:’ etc are supposed to refer to seeing as it needs to be an exact match with what is stored with the bank? Perhaps City, County etc might be a better label for the fields so that we know what part of the address is supposed to go in which field?

A simple question, but sadly it was picked up by an even simpler person, called Kristy. This is what I really hate about customer service people – sometimes they don’t even read the question and just submit the stock answer. I may as well have clicked on a random link in the FAQ for the help this bint was:

Support Agent
Kristy
03/03/2010 12:11:55

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 02nd March 2010.

If your account email address is wrong or your details need updating you can change these by doing the following.

1) Login to your 123-reg control panel.
2) Scroll down to the section titled ‘Account management’.
3) Click ‘Update personal information’.

All fields need to match the exact billing address of the card/

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Kristy
123-reg

That angered me, as you can probably imagine…

Account Owner
03/03/2010 12:45:53

You didn’t read the question did you?

Please read the question before replying…

This time Lewis picked up the batten, and at least he gave it a good effort.

Support Agent
Lewis
03/03/2010 14:22:37

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 03rd March 2010.

When the card details are processed we check the first line of address and the postcode.

I have checked your account and no postcode is listed. Ensure the card billing address is registered to the address below.

*****
UK

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Lewis
123-reg

No postcode? Firstly, pretty sure I entered one and secondly it should be mandatory anyway? Checked the form again – after Lewis had ‘mentioned’ the postcode thing and yeah, my browser shows I definitely entered one.

Account Owner
03/03/2010 15:30:00

No Postcode is listed?

That’s funny because my browser history shows that I have entered one, and have entered one each time I have attempted to update the card details.

Maybe I’ll try again, maybe I’ll just give up and use another registrar. Haven’t decided yet. Full marks for actually reading the question though, that’s more than Kristy managed. Perhaps she’s having an off day?

Then, just to completely piss me off – another moron chimed in having completely ignored everything that had been written so far. This guy, Ray, was asking for a verbal volley.

Support Agent
Ray
05/03/2010 12:19:18

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 03rd March 2010.

We check the address on your 123-reg user account and the address that the bank hold for your card.

If your account email address is wrong or your details need updating you can change these by doing the following.

1) Login to your 123-reg control panel.
2) Scroll down to the section titled ‘Account management’.
3) Click ‘Update personal information’.

From here you can change any of the details for your 123-reg account. Please note that any alterations made here will not change domain name registration details, they will simply update the 123-reg database.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Ray
123-reg

Ray got just what he asked for in my opinion…

Account Owner
05/03/2010 12:28:30

I’m amazed at the way you guys just copy and paste your stock responses into this system without reading a single word of the original question. I give up. Truly. I’ve known some bad customer service in my time, NTL and BT being very high on the list, but at least they actually know what you’re asking before they ignore you. You guys aren’t even concerned with that.

Amazing, really. Full marks.

This got Kristy’s attention – and she decided to check that the issue had been resolved.

Support Agent
Kristy
08/03/2010 16:32:04

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 05th March 2010.

Please can you confirm that you are still having an issue?

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Kristy
123-reg

After trying for what had to go down as the last time, the form worked. Perhaps one of their developers was made aware of the issue at long last?

Account Owner
08/03/2010 16:34:53

Magically it seems to work now. Correct something on the form did we? Looks to me as though the postcode field wasn’t labelled correctly last time.

And then Kristy mopped up, closing the support ticket.

Support Agent
Kristy
08/03/2010 16:45:12

Dear Darren,

Thank you for contacting 123-reg on the 08th March 2010.

Sorry for the inconvenience this caused you.

If we can be of any further help with regard to this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards

Kristy
123-reg

Why couldn’t this have all been done first time round? Why did it take 3 different support agents to solve a very simple problem? I’ll know next time not to bother with 123-Reg’s support, they’re imbeciles.

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