[rant]Sporty's and EAA[/rant]

[BigBadLou]

I know it is Friday and I should be out flying. Well, it was 105 degrees (F) on the way home from work today so no, not going flying.

But when I got home and went through the mail, I was surprised that I got yet another annoying panhandling letter from the EAA monkeys. And then I noticed that it was not addressed to me but my dear wife.
After a few seconds of thinking where the holy heck these idiots could have dug up her name, I realized that she made a mistake of buying me a funny aviation T-shirt from Sporty's for Christmas.
To clarify what's quietly implied here, she's a usual wife, so no pilot's license, no racing license, no boating license, no gun license, no aircraft title in her name, no affiliation with any aviation businesses, her name is not known anywhere in the aviation world.
Well, except at Sporty's. Who, obviously, sold it to the EAA, greedy bastards. Who, you ask? BOTH!

So now I dislike Sporty's too. (on top of EAA because their retarded advertising/panhandling/begging monkeys aren't smart enough to even remember WTF their name stands for)

So thanks, Sporty's, for putting my wife on a list of names to email tons of useless junk to over the next several decades. Looking forward to seeing how low you sink and what other low-lives you will sell her information to. Aircraft dealers? Door-to-door vacuum salesmen?
This might turn out interesting afterall.

[/rant]

 

[Shepherd]

Since your wife is getting all this junk mail anyway, can I forward mine on to her?

Seriously, I feel your pain.
My mother-in-law stayed with us for 5 months last year. She had her mail forwarded here from Nashville, and had to get some prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy.
I get more junk mail in her name than in mine and my wife's combined.
My mom stayed with us for 2 weeks, just before she died.
That was almost 4 years ago, and her mail just keeps on coming.

 

[Clip4]

It is not like they kept it a secret.

SPORTY’S PRIVACY POLICY
For over fifty years our philosophy has been to earn and keep our customers’ trust and to provide the best service and customer satisfaction in the mail order industry. Because of this philosophy, we treat the information you provide us in confidence.

When you visit our web site, our web server will recognize your Internet service provider. This visitor information allows us to make our site work better for you, but just visiting our website will not provide a record of your individual email address. We will not have a record of your email address until you provide it for our use.

When ordering or requesting a catalog, customers provide Sporty’s with certain information such as name, address, telephone number, etc. This information is necessary to process an order. A customer’s telephone number is used when we have a question about the order. It may also be used by a delivery service if there is a question about delivery. For its own use Sporty’s retains information about transactions with customers.

We send customers periodic catalog mailings and may send emails announcing items we believe of interest to them. We also make our mailing list (name and address only, not our email list or telephone numbers) available to a few reputable, carefully screened companies whose products you may find of interest.

Telephone numbers, email addresses and credit card numbers are only released if there is a court order or to law enforcement agencies if requested. With web orders, that information is kept on our web server for only a brief time before it is transferred to our main computer which is not accessible to the web. However, your name and address is stored on our web server so it will be available when you login to your account with your user name and password. If you do not wish us to disclose your mailing list information to any third parties, please let us know.

We expect to continue to earn your trust for at least another fifty years.

 

[Skyrys62]

I think ANY company should have to obtain permission to send marketing materials of any kind.
Especially to any personal service I pay for.

 

[BigBadLou]

I think ANY company should have to obtain permission to send marketing materials of any kind.
Especially to any personal service I pay for.

Not anymore. It is a different world, we are the cash cows.
Before, companies used to be here for us, customers. No more.
Now we are here for them. Without us customers, companies cannot make profit. So they use us in any way the can to maximize their numbers.

I don't mind if a company sends me a catalog or ad for their own stuff. But I mind when they profit off of me by selling all my information to god-knows-what-jerk (aka: highest bidder).

And the best part is when they sell the information to a clueless company that obviously does 0 screening on what information they just paid for and waste paper and money by mailing useless c*ap to people who won't even know WTF they received.
It was just amusing to see the level of stupidity that is in marketing departments nowadays. To maximize their ROI in marketing, you'd think they make smart decisions and target the right audience. Well, not everybody in the world can be smart.

 

[X3 Skier]

Junk mail goes direct to the recycling bin so it's no big deal to me.

Can't say the same for the robocalls

Cheers

 

[Scrabo]

I changed my VM outgoing message last year. Modified the famous line from "Taken"

"If you are looking to sell me something, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you."

Typed it into a note in the iphone, had Siri play it back while I recorded it as my outgoing message.