A Tale of 2 WAHMs

[...] Work at Home Mom Blog - A Tale of 2 Wahms wrote an interesting post today on A Slam Against Small Business OwnersHere’s a quick excerptA Slam Against Small Business Owners “When you buy something at a small, lesser-known online store, there’s a decent chance they will sell your address to spammers.” and, “Sign up for a newsletter? Your address could certainly get sold.” Quoted by Neil J. Rubenking of PC Magazine. This was quoted on another work at home mom blog, Lynette Chandler of Tech Based Marketing who came across it by reading a recent issue of PC Magazine. I would love to see ANY information that could possibly back [...]

What a load of rubbish. I think he has a few roos loose in his top paddock. As the owner of an online store I can say that there is no way I share those addresses. I don’t like spam so I refuse to inflict it on anyone else. Most online store owners work incredibly hard to establish and maintain a good reputation. Who would want to sacrifice that by selling a mailing list? I want to build my business, not destroy it!

Ugh! That’s all I can think of to say without inserting a bunch of bad words in the comment box! You’d think they’d do a little research instead of just ASSuming such a ridiculous thing.

They’re probably cranky from some bad experience they had ten years ago or something.

Don’t have to tell you I agree

You have suggested to me and also others on Alice’s blog too have said to “quit whining and doing something about it”. The reason I have yet to send a direct email to the editor about this is a bit of an experiment.

I want to see how well they are watching their own brand online. To me, posting it on the blog and having this kind of reaction on blogs like yours is doing something about it. In today’s world of blogging and instant publication, they should be savvy about this…

How could he possibly make that kind of assumption about the online small business owner. He obviously has no idea how hard it already is to compete with big name companies - who, like you said Anita are even more likely to share our information!

There are a lot of hard-working, honest small business owners whose business could really be damaged by a statement like this - esp. by a big name magazine!

This guy has no idea!

I do not appreciate this remark either about small business owners. Where does this guy get off saying we will sell addresses to spammers and also would get sold if someone signed up for a newsletter? I am sorry if this has happened to him, but it certainly is not the way we work our business.
We have reputations to keep in hand so we are not going to let ourselves be known as spammers or are we going to sell addresses to spammers. I don’t like spammers and will not become one.

I think this guy needs to apologize to all of us who are working very hard to be on the right side of the fence here.
Obviously he doesn’t know too much about us or our businesses. He should find out a little about us before he goes down grading us.

I do not own a small business but I can speak from the point of a view as a customer. I prefer to deal with a small business over a corporation any day. I am treated better and if there is an issue with my purchase I feel comfortable knowing I can speak with an actual human on the telephone versus a long line of automated messages only to ultimately reach someone I cannot understand.

As far as the email issue is concerned, I have never received an unwanted email from a small business owner as I do from the larger companies I have dealt with. The way I think these companies get away with this is because they call them messages from their affiliations or sponsors.

I remember of one purchase from a certain company. As much as I would like to, I will not publish the name here. I specifically un-checked the box to receive messages from their affiliations. The very next day I received an email from a sponsor of this company. I was very angry and called to complain. I was told that it would be taken care of. It has been well over a year now and it still has not been taken care of like I was promised.

As fate may have it, I have found another website that offers the same product and free shipping and is run by a mom and her daughter. In the words of my dear sweet grandmother, God does not like ugly.

I’m just dumbfounded how backwards that statement really is. I don’t even think the average small business even knows HOW to “sell their list to spammers”, let alone actually DO it. Where did they even get this idea? Something tells me this “author” got a big fat check from some big corp. Try as they might, they’ll never duplicate good old fashion customer service though.

Oh, good grief. I dislike blanket statments like that one. Our small business would NEVER sell our customers’ information. We pride ourselves in great service and get terrific testimonials from our customers without asking. Why would we jeopardize all that goodwill?

I do agree and I think that business owners like us care more about our list than any bigger companies because we “own the business” and are answerable to our customers. Whereas the big companies, the CEOs are just “workers” and care only about the bottom line.

However, when i see forums that get spam by spammers who thinks of nothing to post a spam, or see the websites that are run by spammers, i am sure they are small opeations, and they are all over the internet - makes one wonder if these are the “small business” owners that the article is referring to. Its just sad and irresponsible that the author lump everyone in one category.