Amazon Overkill or Spam?

booler

About three or four weeks ago I was looking at digital cameras in Amazon. I am going on holiday and I was considering replacing my old Panasonic. I later decided to wait till I come back and till I have better decided what I want.

Since then I have received an email from Amazon every single day listing digital cameras and prices. They are obviously trying to coax me into making a purchase but is it necessary to bombard people with what is effectively spam on a daily basis just because they happened to look at an item?

For my part I got fed up with it so I have now unsubscribed from all their notifications. I am also left feeling annoyed at Amazon as a company. Surely what they are doing is counter productive?

PDC

I'd certainly say its unproductive, but you were subscribed to the emails so not spam.

tonyh66

I think you should claim compensation for harassment :P

victor2

I've switched off all my Amazon "marketing" emails too. Gets annoying to receive emails every day about things you only had a passing interest in - especially after Christmas if you've used it to buy presents other people have indicated they would like, but you wouldn't be seen dead with one!

Mr_Toad

You can turn them off.

I mentioned them in the recent Spam Spam Spam thread.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4434137


I was convinced that I'd told Amazon not to contact me and I had, I had no subscriptions but this is different from their marketing emails that they send daily after you look at anything.

Tech101 pointed me in the right direction, it's in your account profiles and I haven't had a single email from them since I turned them off

scottishbargainhunter_2

I turned off Amazon emails too. There is letting customers know about products, but the whole going online and finding random things I've searched for before come up, or emails about what I've searched does put me off.

neilwoods

Yeah, 1 whole email a day, how bad is that

booler

neilwoods wrote: »

Yeah, 1 whole email a day, how bad is that

It's bad!

It is not good etiquette to do this to your customers. Amazon are totally overdoing it.

I suspect that you may not understand what we are discussing here. I am self employed and I probably get about 300 - 500 emails per day. I have to deal with them all and the vast majority of them are spam.

Someone said it's not spam if you sign up for it but no one would sign up to any list that was going to send you irritating and irrelevant emails at least once every day. IMO spam is defined by the recipient, not the sender.

PDC

booler wrote: »

I suspect that you may not understand what we are discussing here. I am self employed and I probably get about 300 - 500 emails per day. I have to deal with them all and the vast majority of them are spam.

Someone said it's not spam if you sign up for it but no one would sign up to any list that was going to send you irritating and irrelevant emails at least once every day. IMO spam is defined by the recipient, not the sender.

I highly recommend setting up a second email account for online shopping and mailing lists and such outside of the account you use for business.

Been doing this for some years and no only does it cut down on genuine spam to my main email account it also makes it much easier to prioritise emails.

Spam definition relates to the reciving of unsolicited messages which emails from a company you have singed up for updates/offer from aren't really but I understand where you are coming from.

victor2

booler wrote: »

It's bad!

It is not good etiquette to do this to your customers. Amazon are totally overdoing it.

I suspect that you may not understand what we are discussing here. I am self employed and I probably get about 300 - 500 emails per day. I have to deal with them all and the vast majority of them are spam.

Someone said it's not spam if you sign up for it but no one would sign up to any list that was going to send you irritating and irrelevant emails at least once every day. IMO spam is defined by the recipient, not the sender.

I agree with a lot of what you say there.
Only yesterday, I showed a lady who is a fairly basic computer user how to go into her Amazon account and disable the marketing emails. She was tired of deleting the daily junk from them and had never read down it to see the "small print" regarding opting out.

Johnmcl7

victor2 wrote: »

I agree with a lot of what you say there.
Only yesterday, I showed a lady who is a fairly basic computer user how to go into her Amazon account and disable the marketing emails. She was tired of deleting the daily junk from them and had never read down it to see the "small print" regarding opting out.

It does amuse me that these marketting e-mails frequently have large headings highlighting how to add them to your safe senders list to make sure they don't go into spam/junk then the details for unsubscribing in small font at the bottom.

I also agree that amazon's mails are excessive, I have them all turned off although for some reason they occasionally get turned back on particularly if ordering from a different country's Amazon.

John