A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
Would you believe that it has taken me a whole year to write this column? That may sound like braggadocio, but it’s almost true. I’ve spent the whole year of 2012 gathering data for this article.
As you may or may not know, one of the reasons I’ve kept my internet domain name is so that I can have a whole lot of email addresses. I usually use one email address for each site that requires registration. If I start getting a lot of spam, I can easily tell who probably sold my address. If I would start getting spam on my club email, I could assume that one of our members may have gotten hacked.
During the holidays of 2011, I noticed that emails from sites trying to sell me stuff seemed to increase. I got curious and on January 1, 2012, I changed my e-mail filters to automatically forward sales mail to a special folder. For an entire year, I saved the e-mails from the following sites:
AARP
Amazon
Best Buy
Books A Million
HP
Zinio
The only e-mails I saved were the ones that I didn’t expect. For instance mail confirming purchases went into their normal folders. Mail from Amazon asking me to rate products were not saved.
Which site do you think was the worst mailer? You may be surprised. I was.
I received 268 unrequested communications from Books A Million. In fairness, I must tell you that a portion of them were due to an error by me. I originally signed up with the company when I purchased a discount membership card at the local store. In October, I made an online purchase and accidentally used the wrong mail address (books instead of book). You guessed it. I started getting email from them two at a time. I used their unsubscribe link on one address, but it didn’t work. These days, Books A Million is getting a return to sender error message.
The 111 emails I got from AARP didn’t really surprise me. After all, their monthly magazine usually has about 30 advertising inserts. These emails are all definitely from sales of my address. I’ve changed my filter. If AARP ever sends me something important, I won’t see it because it goes right to the deleted folder.
The 100 emails from Amazon were suggestions of products that I might like. I’ll never know if I like any of them, because I didn’t read any.
I was surprised that Best Buy only sent me 30 emails. That was even less that the 65 sent by HP. Go figure!
Zinio is a magazine subscription service that tried 27 times to sell me a new magazine subscription. I don’t spend nearly that much time in the bathroom.
I didn’t check monthly totals, but I noticed a marked increase between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I wonder why? If you do a lot of online buying, consider your email setup, there are several places on the internet where you can get a free email address. Don’t clutter your inbox with mail you don’t really want.
That’s all for this month. Thanks for reading.