Another marketer has surfaced claiming to have been ripped off by an e-mail appending company and there’s evidence the firm is related to EmailAppenders, which is in a dispute with another U.S. firm and possibly related to or operated by the same India-based spamming operation.
Two recent articles published here— one detailing a dispute where Javelin Marketing claimed it lost $14,000 on a garbage list from EmailAppenders, and another showing that EmailAppenders U.S. operations may be nothing more than a rented UPS box in New York City—prompted Scott MacAdam, proprietor of MacAdam Magazine Marketing, to e-mail this newsletter to tell of a similar deal gone bad with a firm calling itself Sales Universe.
Could it be the same or a related company to the firm that operates EmailAppenders? he asked.
Indeed, it could.
According to MacAdam, he signed a deal on behalf of a client under which Sales Universe was to append e-mail addresses to the client’s postal file.
He added he paid upfront.
“The agreement was that for any undeliverables exceeding 20%, we would get a refund,” said MacAdam. “About half of the addresses were bad. So I asked for a refund, and that started a process that was unbelievable.”
By MacAdam’s calculations, Sales Universe owes him a refund just over $3,000. He added his representative at Sales Universe, Kevin Daniel, was unresponsive and stopped answering his e-mails completely after he threatened to take the matter to his client’s attorneys.
However, in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter, Daniel claimed: “To reimburse MacAdam for the bad e-mails they received, we have already offered them several credit options. We did not hear from MacAdam after that on which option they would prefer.”
MacAdam, however, forwarded this newsletter a short string of e-mails in which on March 10 he sent his calculations to justify the refund he believes he is owed. According to MacAdam, Daniel did not respond. Also according to MacAdam, there was no discussion of “credit options.”
On May 15, according to the e-mail string MacAdam supplied this newsletter, he sent a message to Daniel urging him to acknowledge he received it, to which Daniel responded simply: “Hi Scott, Got your mail.” MacAdam responded to that message by urging Daniel to tell him what to do next quickly because the matter was about to be turned over to attorneys.
That is when all communication from Daniel stopped, according to MacAdam.
MacAdam also said when he began researching Sales Universe online, he was unable to get a reliable physical address for the firm. He claims that at one point Sales Universe gave its location as Freemont, CA, but then switched its address to San Francisco.
“I just kept running into a blank wall,” he said.
He added that he finally gave up on getting the refund, in part because his client’s attorneys said it would cost more to go after Sales Universe than it would to simply let the matter drop.
Meanwhile, there is evidence that Sales Universe may be part of a network of firms operated by Data Champions/Sloan Marketing, which according to anti-spam outfit Spamhaus, is an India-based spamming operation that also operates EmailAppenders.
As of this writing, SalesUniverse.com lists its U.S. operations at 425 Market Street, suite 2200 in San Francisco. The address is home to The Regus Group, an office-space subletting outfit.
According to Jane Ponce, operations manager for the Regus Group, there has never been a company called Sales Universe at Regus.
However, there was a company called Sales Online having its mail delivered there until Jan. 31, she said. Ponce added that Regus sent Sales Online’s bills to 2370 Market Street in San Francisco.
The 2370 Market Street address is the same one Sales Universe’s Daniel instructed MacAdam to send his check, according to MacAdam.
This is also the same address that EventGain.com and OptInMailOnline.com list as their U.S. operations—two Web sites that, according to anti-spam outfit Spamhaus’s Registry of Known Spam Operations, are operated by India-based Data Champions/Sloan Marketing.
According to Spamhaus, Data Champions/Sloan Marketing also operates EmailAppenders.com.
Anti-spam outfit Aspews.org also lists EmailAppenders and Sales Universe as two among many aliases used by Sloan Marketing. The Aspews.org listing doesn’t mention Data Champions.
According to Ponce, the Sales Online account with Regus was opened with a credit card and a driver’s license by a woman named Hemamalini Nidamanuri with a Houston, TX drivers license.
According to Spamhaus, the same people who operate EmailAppenders also operate SalesBrowser.com, which lists its U.S. operations as located at 14781 Memorial Drive, Houston, TX.
Also, Ponce said she corresponded with Nidamanuri by e-mail at the address Hemam@mails1.com. According to Spamhaus, Data Champions/Sloan Marketing also operates or has operated the Mails1.com domain.
An e-mail sent to Hemam@mails1.com bounced.
Sales Universe’s Daniel denied ever having heard of EmailAppenders.
“We are not aware of Email Appenders and not a part of any spam ring,” he wrote in his e-mail to this newsletter. “For instance Scott Macadam is our referral client and we follow ethical business practices for lead generation. If we would not have serviced our clients correctly, we wouldn’t have got Scott as a referral.”
