Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 09:09:05 -0400
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Rick Andersen , providing an international
perspective, wrote:
> Depends on your point of view. If I add up my online time for the
> past five years taken up downloading unsolicited promotional spams,
> many distasteful and not for children (but that's another story),
> they have cost me a fair chunk of money.
This gets bundled with "How many years of your life do you spend on your
commute" or "How many of productive activity can you add to a year if you
slept one hour less each night."
> Imagine if telephone
> marketers called collect but you couldn't refuse the charges. I don't
> care if it's 2 cents or 2 hundred dollars -- the point is that they are
> ripping me off against my will and they know it. It's immoral, it
> displays questionable ethics, but it sure is enterprising.
It's not immoral. It's an email message. The fact of its existence has no
moral dimension. It is neutral. If you have a problem downloading items
blindly, the solution lies more toward your online service providing you
with the ability to download items intelligently. Your provider is
extremely fortunate that the finger of blame is pointing somewhere else,
rather than where it belongs, on the provider's lack of focus on customer
service.
> I don't quite get the remark about "the cost of doing business."
> How is paying for junk mail part of the cost of doing business?
Paying for mail is part of the cost of doing business. Mail being junk is
purely and simply a matter of personal taste.
> >Considering that AOL regularly greets its users with a drop-dead screen
> >advertising some pretty worthless books and other like products, I think
> >they've got a lot of gall trying to block other online merchants
peddling
> >dreck from trying to reach their customers. Pot calling the kettles
black
> >leaps immediately to mind.
>
> Are you trying to connect AOL's online advertising with unsolicited
> e-mail spam promotions?
Absolutely. They're both forms of online advertising. AOL's opening ad
screen is a drop-dead screen. To the best of my knowledge it's modal. It
stays there building usage charges until the user clicks on the Cancel
button.
> Can't folks end the initial one month
> free subscription if AOL's ads bother them that much? Too bad
> spam isn't so easily dealt with.
Spam can be dealt with similarly. Just cancel your account. In neither case
is that an adequate resolution.
> There are insults to be hurled at AOL
> but I wonder if this one is appropriate.
When it comes to that ad screen, any insult is appropriate.
Donovan White
Online Information Development and Design
dwhite@olinfo.com (508) 597-5321
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