How Groupy.co.nz treat customers
Posted: June 26th, 2010 | Author: Daniel J Miles | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: experiences, groupy, groupy.co.nz, New Zealand, online business, wellington, www.groupy.co.nz | 2 Comments »UPDATE: I’m putting this first so that it will be seen – Lance from Groupy has straight out said it’s unacceptable from them. So take the following as actions of an errant employee founding partner and not as a reflection on the rest of groupy.co.nz. Original post follows.
Apologies about the length of this. It’s going to include a bunch of quoted emails. I’ll quote them in full so that I don’t get accused of leaving stuff out afterwards. The short story is I won’t be shopping with groupy.co.nz – which is a shame, because Lance Wiggs runs some excellent businesses, the concept was good, and I had a lot of hope for it.
It started when Groupy sent out a message to around one hundred users, but cc’ed us all instead of BCC’ing, thus giving out our email addresses to about a hundred other people. This is a pet hate of mine. I know people do this by accident, but it’s poor form.
Groupy hadn’t done anything for four hours. I replied to all so that the company would know, and also to let everyone know their email was given out. My email read:
Hi there – if you’re going to bulk email, could you please BCC to hide my email address? Not that I don’t trust all these other people or anything, but it’s pretty standard practice.- DJM
Scott from Groupy then sent out a perfectly reasonable apology to everyone. I haven’t quoted it here because it’s not interesting – it’s exactly the right email to send to apologise and end the problem. Issue over, right? Wrong. I then got this followup email from him:
Daniel,Thanks so much for going to the extent of CC’ing everyone in again on that message, proliferating the exact behavior/problem you voiced concern over in the email.You could have BCC’d them!I don’t understand why you would do that – it’s only going to aggravate a situation that occurred as a result of a honest mistake.Was this a malicious action?SincerelyScottGroupy
My reply came:
Not at all – I thought it best to let them know if they hadn’t noticed. I’d certainly want it brought to my attention.With regard to BCC/CCing them, by that point their email addresses had already been given out by you – I’m not sure if you’re implying that it makes it worse to have pointed it out to them?Apologies if I’ve upset you here, but I did what I would have liked to have done to me. I also don’t like the implication I’m being malicious.- DJM
I then had two afterthoughts and so sent two more emails – I know, that’s not a good habit!
Not to mention that you then turned around and did the exact same thing you just told me was malicious and cc’ed everyone on your message.- DJM
To clearup any confusion, the message I refer to there is the apology message. All messages quoted here except my initial one were between Scott and I, not everyone else. My point was that his apology message had cc’ed everyone again, rather than bcc’ing – the exact same thing he’d just gotten angry at me for doing.
And then,
You know, the more I think about you implying I was being malicious the more it irks me. All I did was let other people know what they quite rightly deserved to have pointed out to them.It’s not like I’m commercially in competition with you in any way. In fact, I have a lot of respect for Lance and his ability with businesses, and when Groupy launched I supported you by tweeting of it to my followers / a facebook wall post.So I really don’t think it’s acceptable to call me malicious for trying to let the affected parties know of a mess that you guys – however inadvertently – created.- DJM
The reply came through:
Hi Daniel,I did not imply anything in my mail to you – I simply asked a poignant question.We have had hacking (attempted), impersonation and various other malicious acts perpetrated on us thus far and I am within my rights to ask.Apologies if you feel ‘accused’.You know, the more I think about you implying I was being malicious the more it irks me. All I did was let other people know what they quite rightly deserved to have pointed out to them.I don’t believe it is your responsibility to send unsolicited mail to our mailing list to inform them of our error.Informing our subscribers is our job and something we were going to attend to this evening, as soon as we had the time.Everyone on that mailing list has opted-in to mail from us, but none have opted-in to your right-putting, no matter how well-intentioned.in taking your action, and spamming our subscribers, you have jeopardized our brand, credibility and goodwill and I do not like it.Me voicing my opinion about this, to you alone, is a mild reaction.It’s not like I’m commercially in competition with you in any way.How do I know this?In fact, I have a lot of respect for Lance and his ability with businesses, and when Groupy launched I supported you by tweeting of it to my followers / a facebook wall post.Great, thanks for that.Let’s put his issue behind us – I have a business to run and I’m sure you have better things to do than to argue with me
Sincerely,Scott
This wasn’t good enough. Apologising and criticising further. I’m really annoyed by this point. My reply:
No Scott. You jeapordised your brand and credibility when you made the mistake, not me when I pointed it out.You may not feel it’s my responsibility to let the other victims of your negligence know, however I don’t believe it’s your responsibility to breach the privacy act by handing out my email address to everyone else. However I chose not to phrase my email to them in that way.I feel you should simply be apologising rather than continuing to insinuate this is in any way my fault.If you are in any doubt as to whether I’m in competition with you you’re welcome to ring me to discuss it. (MY CELL NUMBER). Suffice to say though, I’m not.- DJM
His reply to that one. This also refers to a couple of tweets I sent after his last email. You can check them yourselves, I’m @danieljmiles on twitter:
Quoting me:“Was this a malicious action?”Question mark – not a statement, a question!http://www.englishchick.com/grammar/grrem.htmSee section titled “INTERROGATORY”.Now, quoting you:“It’s an honest mistake to do that, but to then call me malicious for letting the other affected users know is not on. Can’t recommend them.”Are you attempting to turn this issue into a slander case?and againI feel you should simply be apologising rather than continuing to insinuate this is in any way my fault.Look, I don’t work with insinuation, just fact.“Just got told I was being malicious by Groupy when I notified everyone else they CC’ed instead of BCC’ed and gave out all our emails.”We ‘gave out’ less than 100 email addresses. Do you believe this to be our entire database of subscribers?If you are in any doubt as to whether I’m in competition with you you’re welcome to ring me to discuss it. (MY CELL NUMBER). Suffice to say though, I’m not.I’d much rather meet in person for this, I have time Monday afternoon.Sincerely,Scott
I think the sending of a link to explain the question mark speaks for itself. In case I need to defend the fact that “Are you being malicious” is clearly accusatory, it’s roughly the equivalent of me saying “Are you a paedophile” and then when you get angry with me, saying that I was only asking a question. I’m also not entirely sure if he threatened me with a slander suit there, but if so – try me.
He then tweeted about me – “just discovered the biggest … on twitter @danieljmiles – quite an accomplishment lol some people take themselves WAY to seriously.”
So there you go. I can’t recommend anyone does business with groupy.co.nz – I would happily have forgiven their mistake but it’s all snowballed from there. The company’s inability to just apologise and move on without criticising me further each time leaves me somewhat sour.
By the way – my response to his tweet was just to retweet it for posterity. I’m not going to stoop to the level of a groupy.co.nz representative!
I’m happy to talk to anyone from Groupy about this – you can contact me via the comments. Even if it’s just confirming that everything from Scott is consistent with company policy.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Daniel J Miles, The Game. The Game said: RT @danieljmiles: Really annoyed with groupy.co.nz now. Driven to blog. Any comment from @lancewiggs? http://www.absolutegeni.us/archives/429 [...]
Love this Daniel. Shame as it was a good company, but if you check out their facebook fan page it seems like he is mucking up all over the show!