Yikes: Another Bad List Deal
Yet a third marketer has come forward claiming to have been ripped off in an e-mail list deal with a firm apparently related to an alleged spamming operation in India.
Amy Harold, a marketing specialist with a U.S. manufacturing firm whose management asked that its name kept out of this story, said that in November 2007 she paid up front a $3,500 required-minimum-buy to Sales Universe to append e-mail addresses to a file of close to 1,600 records for 60 cents match. Business-to-business files lists tend to be much smaller than business-to-consumer lists.
Upon completion of the project, the cost of all the valid matches was to be applied to the $3,500 advance and whatever remained was to be banked for future work, said Harold.
“The list they sent had 40% bad information, so they promised me half-price on my next list,” she said in an e-mail exchange with this newsletter.
And that’s when the relationship went south, according to Harold.
“When I tried to use the balance, they would not let me spend it without another big purchase on top of it,” she wrote. “I pointed out that it was illegal to do that, but he [Kevin Daniel, Sales Universe’s representative] didn’t care. Our corporate lawyer sent him a letter explaining exactly why it was illegal (a tying arrangement that is prohibited under applicable federal and state antitrust laws), but there was no response.”
Harold then filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Oakland, CA.
“Two weeks later, I got a call from SalesUniverse’s customer service (a New York City phone number),” wrote Harold. “Kevin Cooper promised to be in touch every day until the issue was resolved. He, along with his boss Susan Jones, stayed in touch long enough to promise me the list I am due and to get my list parameters. That was a month ago. I have been calling their number for two weeks – no response. Same with e-mails.”
The Better Business Bureau determined Sales Universe’s name to be OptInLists at 2370 Market Street in San Francisco. BBBOnline lists the complaint as unresolved. BBBOnline also notes that the company also does business as Event Gain. A call to the Better Business Bureau’s dispute specialist handling Harold’s complaint was not returned.
As reported here last week, there is evidence that Sales Universe—or OptInLists—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.com.
EmailAppenders is in an unresolved dispute with U.S.-based Javelin marketing over an alleged $14,000 list deal gone bad.
At the same time, EventGain.com and OptInMailOnline.com also list the 2370 Market Street address 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.
Kevin Daniel, the name given to Harold by the Sales Universe representative, is the same one Scott MacAdam, proprietor of MacAdam Magazine Marketing was given in a similar deal he claims went bad.
According to MacAdam, he paid upfront for an append job on behalf of a client and when the file Sales Universe returned to him had significant amounts of garbage names on it, Sales Universe failed to live up to its end of the bargain and provide a partial refund.
As of deadline, MacAdam said he had yet to get the refund he believes he is due from Sales Universe.
Also at deadline, Bob Richards, marketing director at Javelin, said he had accepted an unspecified offer to settle his dispute with EmailAppenders but has yet to receive any money.
Sales Universe’s Daniel did not respond to requests for comment on the alleged dispute with Harold. The comment requests were left on his voice mail and sent to an e-mail address Daniel used to reply to this newsletter’s request for comment for last week’s article on Sales Universe’s alleged dispute with MacAdam.
