[Mark Holtz]

I want to get this off my chest... so, if I offend any dealers here, I apologize.

First of all, I hate the unsolicited commercial e-mail known as SPAM. It's among one of top complaints by our customer base, and drives me nuts, especially when I have to go into a customer's mailbox and delete over 70MB of accumulated SPAM. So, you can understand my flustration.

Now, mind you, we have active dealers from both DirecTV and Dish Network who active participate in the forums. We've had dishdepot mentioned in the 721 review, and that's OK. The mods depend on user contributions to keep this place ad free.

What drives me up the wall is these dealers who think that SPAM is a legitimate way of doing business? My philosophy is that that I don't do business with companies that SPAM. But, what is Dish and DirecTV doing to dealers who SPAM? I know that from past dealer chat transcripts, the dealers were reminded about possible changes in the telemarketing law.

 

[Guest]

I've started fighting back at the spammers with a neat program: Mailwasher. It can be downloaded from www.mailwasher.net

It feels good to give the spammers a taste of their own.

 

[Mark Holtz]

Now that I've had some sleep, and am a little calmer...

I got hit with a lot of SPAM, including a hard-core porn ad that offended me. But, the amount of SPAM continues to increase. What can I do short of lining up the SPAMmers and shooting them?

This type of marketing activity only hurts, not helps, the legitimate DBS dealers. If they see an ad for Dish Network system or DirecTV on a SPAM, it hurts the provider even though they had nothing to do with it. Maybe one of the dealers on this board can communicate to Dish/DirecTV so that, through a dealer fax blast or a dealer chat, that using unsolicited commercial e-mail to advertise the systems is a very bad idea. Maybe one of the DBS lurkers can even send that message back.

 

[Guest]

Yea, I have used mailwasher myselfe and it does a preety good job of bouncing back alot of the spam.

I started using the program 2 weeks ago, when I was getting spammed 15-20 times per day. By using this program I have gotten it down to about 5, just by bouncing back all the E-mails I don't want!

 

[Guest]

NO dealer should use spam or junk fax's. I also think telemarketing stinks and I guess E* agrees, they will no longer support dealers who telemarket.

 

[Mark Holtz]

I'm now using mailwasher..... pretty good ONCE I got it configured right. (One of my mailboxes generates a auto-reply, which in turns causes non-deliverable messages to be sent by postmaster at my hosting provider.) On a dial-up from home, you have to let the program sit there and process the mail through the blacklist providers for several minutes, depending on the size of the mailbox.

Isn't there a dealer chat coming up? Maybe we should e-mail the ceo to remind the dealers that advertising systems through SPAM and junk faxes is a bad idea, as it makes the parent company look bad.

 

[jrjcd]

as if they cared...lol