Sprint apologizes...and that’s all I wanted

Sprint, after some prompts in which I raised the issue of whether it is wise for a known firm (Sprint) to engage in clearly illegal activity (spam) against residents of the European Union (me), I received the following note from Rose Capra of Sprint.

Mr. Jenkins,

Sorry for the delayed response. As you may have received my out of office message, I have been traveling and it has been difficult to check and respond to email.

Thank you for expressing your concerns regarding the Sprint Ambassador program. I'm very sorry if the original invitation sent, or subsequent communication to you caused any offense or inconvenience. Please be assured that this was not the intent, and that extending an invitation to someone who could not participate in our program due to geographic location was human error, and an honest mistake. I assure that you were not put into any databases as a result of these communications, and you will not be receiving any unsolicited emails about the Sprint Ambassador program in the future.

Thank you for your communication on this matter. I wish you well in your current and future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Rose Capra

Sprint Consumer Marketing

I am not going to fisk the note or the incident. Sprint apologized, and that's good enough for me.

But it's clear they don't read or respect bloggers.... just use them.

Technorati: sprint ambassador, Sprint, lame pitches

Related posts: Spammer Sprint to Jenkins: we are a very big duck and you are.. water, Short update on the Sprint Ambassador diplomatic crisis, Desirable Roasted Coffee breaks diplomatic relations with Sprint Ambassador Team

Posted by Allan Jenkins on March 11, 2006 at 11:42 PM in Mea Culpas & Outright Retractions, Public Relations | Permalink

Comments

Allan, Thanks for the update. No word on making the same offer to three friends in the U.S.?

At least they didn't ignore or send some form letter.

Posted by: Mike Sansone | Mar 12, 2006 12:48:31 AM

I still don't get it, Allan. You've been fairly relentless in criticizing Sprint, yet their only mistake seems to have been their scattergun approach in offering you a service that was nonfunctional in Europe.

Your site clearly says "Contact Allan" in the top left, which seems to be an invitation to send you an e-mail. I don't think anyone who sent you an e-mail, no matter what the content, could be considered to be spamming you, unless there was some information on the subequent page indicating the conditions under which someone could "Contact Allan". They are just following you up on your offer.

You extend the further invitation to phone you: " You can call me at ..." Any reasonable person would take that to be permission to phone you.

I'm all for calling out spammers and clueless pitchers when the situation warrants, but I think you've gone overboard in this case.

Posted by: Eric Eggertson | Mar 12, 2006 4:22:30 AM

So are you calling back the Danish navy?

Posted by: Josh Hallett | Mar 12, 2006 5:02:20 AM

Eric, the email Sprint sent is very much a direct violation of the Danish Marketing Act §6a. Personally I would've filed a complaint with the proper authorities (not that it would've let to much).

Posted by: Andreas Haugstrup | Mar 12, 2006 10:56:08 AM

Andreas: I'd send you an e-mail to follow up on this, as you solicit people to do on your blog contact page, but I don't have the budget to handle an overseas prosecution in order to make a point.

Since my free e-mail service includes text ads in the margin, it would be difficult for me to send an e-mail to anyone in Denmark that couldn't be construed as an unsolicited marketing effort.

Posted by: Eric Eggertson | Mar 12, 2006 10:30:34 PM

Eric, Andreas' point is well-taken: capturing and storing the names, addresses, etc of EU residents, then using that information to send unsolicited commercial appeals is illegal (yes, I believe Capra was lying about the database, but I am choosing to ignore that).

Small US companies often fall into this trap (and I am assuming we are all talking about legit businesses; not the Viagra spammers), thinking US marketing laws apply elsewhere. They don't.

Sprint, however, is big enough to know better.

You suggest I overreacted. I don't think so, but that's just me. When I first received their mail, I answered in a sharp but, I hope, jocular manner.

That prompted a terse, anonymous reply from a "team" denying that sending me an unsolicited commercial email was "spam". What is their definition of spam?

More mails resulted in more stonewalling -- which is what really pissed me off.

You throw out two red herrings; let me kill them both for you:

1) I include contact information on my blog. Nigerian scammers and potency pill peddlars routinely use that information to spam me, but I expect that. That's their nature. But are you saying that a respected company can do the same thing, because I invited them to?

2) No, EU law does not prevent you from sending an email with a third-party ad in it. What it does prevent you from doing is sucking up hundreds of blogger email addresses, sending them a form email inviting them to apply for schwag, and then pretending it wasn't a spam move. So you can safely write Andreas.

On an entirely different note (i.e., nothing to do with the comments received so far), I am amused that the blogosphere is twisting itself over WalMart's feeding of info to some bloggers -- while crowing loudly whenever Sprint offers it a free phone for six months. Wonders truly never cease.

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | Mar 12, 2006 11:23:34 PM

As Allan has already pointed out you can safely e-mail me. :o)

There are real issues with the way the Danish Marketing Act is set up. Businesses has to collect approval before sending bids to people - for example. In my opinion those are minor compared to the junk mail hell (both snail, telephone and e-mail) we'd have with a system similar to the American (I know you're Canadian). I've had the pleasure of dealing with the American system during a 6 month stay in country, and the amount of time spent dealing with garbage phone calls and junk mail is astounding.

Anyway!

The Danish Marketing Act only applies to businesses. Private citizens, non-profit organisation, politicians and others are not bound by it. As long as you're not trying to sell anything you can e-mail all you want. And feel free to do so! :o)

Posted by: Andreas Haugstrup | Mar 13, 2006 12:19:01 AM

Allan, one of the many things I suppose I don't yet understand about social media is why you would be satisfied with an apology that you believe to be a lie.

Are you so thrilled to have wrested an apology from a great big company that the content of the apology is irrelevant?

Send that blogger the bedbug letter!

Posted by: david Murray | Mar 13, 2006 8:31:33 PM

It's a good point, David; and when we meet, you are buying the first round for bringing it up.

I'm satisfied that Sprint got around to having a real human come out and say "I'm sorry". Ideally, Capra would have said "And I apologize to everyone for spamming you" but a) I didn't ask for that and b) most bloggers who got the mail are in ecstasy over the idea of a free phone.

Personally, I didn't think anyone could be bought that cheaply, but I do live in Europe where the novelty of the mobile phone wore off several years ago.

No, I'm not happy about the episode. Sprint was lame for spamming me. I was lame to not send their mail to the Kansas Attorney General and the Danish Consumer Ombudsman. Sprint was lame in their replies, and I was lame in accepting the lame apology they managed to make.

Been wrestling with that all day.

Posted by: Allan Jenkins | Mar 14, 2006 12:48:57 AM

Stop wrestling. Order that beer. It's on me.

Posted by: david Murray | Mar 14, 2006 2:33:29 AM

Wow, what an ordeal about Sprint spam...

I think the underlying issue in all this is the difference between an email to discuss a topic and an email pushing an agenda. Eric doesn't seem to get the point. Unless his hypothetical email to Andreas would be asking him to buy or do something completely unrelated, it wouldn't be considered spam.

Eric, if the content isn't what makes spam, then what does? It should go without saying that Allan doesn't want to buy drugs, a Russian bride or a Sprint plan, nor does he want confirm his bank account number to anyone. I assume these are not reasons that he gives his contact information.

Posted by: Emily Melton | Mar 15, 2006 6:15:36 AM

Eric's email wasn't hypothetical, it was informative. :o)

Posted by: Andreas Haugstrup | Mar 15, 2006 11:56:36 AM

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