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>What does that mean? They sign up for our service and expect to get e-mails from us, which they don't receive. We have the same "idea", but the third-party is

by lsc 11y ago

>What does that mean? They sign up for our service and expect to get e-mails from us, which they don't receive. We have the same "idea", but the third-party is interfering with that "idea". That's not quite how it works from the end-user's perspective. Say I buy a product or service from you. Of course, you send me billing emails, etc. and that's fine. The problem is that companies take this further and start thinking they have the "right" to send all sorts of garbage to that customer. Now, they of course let the customer opt out... if the customer is willing to spend ten minutes digging through their interface. But most don't. I know you love those newsletters; they make you money. But don't kid yourself that your customers do. Many are going to click 'report spam' if you send too many. Even if it's not spam by the definition that marketers use, it's still very clearly unwanted email, and marking it as spam is so much easier than going through the unique-to-you opt-out procedure. And if your list is like most, some of the members signed up years ago (or bought something from you years ago) and long ago forgot doing so, so of course they are going to mark it as spam. If you want to send email to your customers, you need to understand this. Note, I'm not saying that you can't send that email; you can. I send email to my customers, and some of it borders on being "newsletters" - I'm just saying that you need to be aware of the cost- that cost is that it will annoy some of your users. Getting your email marked as spam is only one part of that cost. >Even if recipients did know about the third party, do you know the switching costs of e-mail? And, you're suggesting that we should wait until all of our affected members get fed up and change providers (hoping that provider doesn't use the same service, etc.)? All of this, when the problem is obviously being caused by the third-party's error, yet they have no responsibility? My point is that third party has no responsibility to you. They have a responsibility to their customers, but none to you.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
Thanks for the advice. I know you mean well, but none of it applies. I do agree with you on principle. We've been doing this for over a decade and have learned best practices. We also know what our customers appreciate and are very mindful of content, frequency, etc. But, you seem to be overlooking a key point, so I will state it for at least the third time: the problem was NOT the content, and it was NOT being marked as spam by recipients. Instead, we were erroneously classified by the service as sending to honeypot addresses and/or defunct addresses. So, your assumptions about our customers, newsletters, etc. are just not relevant here. >the third party has no responsibility to you. They have a responsibility to their customers... Their customers complained to us that they weren't receiving our emails, so they weren't serving their customers very well in this instance either. But, what you really don't seem to be getting is that they do have a responsibility not to harm us. That's why there is a legal cause of action known as "tortious interference". I sincerely don't know how to make that point any clearer. Perhaps researching that term a bit might help.
- lsc 11y ago
  >But, what you really don't seem to be getting is that they do have a responsibility not to harm us. That's why there is a legal cause of action known as "tortious interference". I sincerely don't know how to make that point any clearer. Perhaps researching that term a bit might help. Yes, yes, reading up on that is probably a good idea. I am not a lawyer... but in the case of a mail-filtering company blocking emails that their customers have asked them to block, they are harming the senders of those mails. That is a direct result of what their customers are paying them to do. Or ad-block programs- really, it's exactly the same thing; what the ad-blocker does for the user does harm the advertisers. There's many, many places in the free market where helping one side of a transaction hurts the other. That probably means that "tortious interference" is more complex than you are making it out to be. There are a lot of situations where helping one party necessarily hurts another, and helping one party over the other is generally not illegal.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    Their customers are not paying them to harm legitimate senders from whom they wish to receive emails. It's unfathomable that you appear to see no dinstinction there. Neither is it "exactly" nor even remotely the same as ad blockers. >That probably means that "tortious interference" is more complex than you are making it out to be. No, it means that your analogies are invalid. Further, perhaps you should look up the term before musing about what it "probably means".
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      [deleted]

by lsc 11y ago

unclebucknasty 11y ago

Thanks for the advice. I know you mean well, but none of it applies. I do agree with you on principle. We've been doing this for over a decade and have learned best practices. We also know what our customers appreciate and are very mindful of content, frequency, etc. But, you seem to be overlooking a key point, so I will state it for at least the third time: the problem was NOT the content, and it was NOT being marked as spam by recipients. Instead, we were erroneously classified by the service as sending to honeypot addresses and/or defunct addresses. So, your assumptions about our customers, newsletters, etc. are just not relevant here. >the third party has no responsibility to you. They have a responsibility to their customers... Their customers complained to us that they weren't receiving our emails, so they weren't serving their customers very well in this instance either. But, what you really don't seem to be getting is that they do have a responsibility not to harm us. That's why there is a legal cause of action known as "tortious interference". I sincerely don't know how to make that point any clearer. Perhaps researching that term a bit might help.

lsc 11y ago
>But, what you really don't seem to be getting is that they do have a responsibility not to harm us. That's why there is a legal cause of action known as "tortious interference". I sincerely don't know how to make that point any clearer. Perhaps researching that term a bit might help. Yes, yes, reading up on that is probably a good idea. I am not a lawyer... but in the case of a mail-filtering company blocking emails that their customers have asked them to block, they are harming the senders of those mails. That is a direct result of what their customers are paying them to do. Or ad-block programs- really, it's exactly the same thing; what the ad-blocker does for the user does harm the advertisers. There's many, many places in the free market where helping one side of a transaction hurts the other. That probably means that "tortious interference" is more complex than you are making it out to be. There are a lot of situations where helping one party necessarily hurts another, and helping one party over the other is generally not illegal.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  Their customers are not paying them to harm legitimate senders from whom they wish to receive emails. It's unfathomable that you appear to see no dinstinction there. Neither is it "exactly" nor even remotely the same as ad blockers. >That probably means that "tortious interference" is more complex than you are making it out to be. No, it means that your analogies are invalid. Further, perhaps you should look up the term before musing about what it "probably means".
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]