People Magazine

Nature of the Offense

The Fast Food Warrior kind of made his own bed with this one. He signed up for some magazine subscription for the free throw-ins, thinking he could cancel before the first bill without penalty. Anyone who has ever done this knows how shamefully stupid this is, but I'm getting off track here...we're here to make fun of the big corporations, not the little people they take advantage of! Off to the letter...

The Letter

To: PEOPLE Magazine
Subject: Matthew McConaughey assaults kitchen staff in Austin restaurant!



No less believable than anything else in People.


Dear Editors of People,

Now that I hopefully have your attention from my subject line, STOP SENDING ME EMAILS!

I have tried several times to unsubscribe from your email list and your subscription folks don't seem to be getting the message. If I recall correctly, the only reason I signed up was to get a $10 coupon to Papa John's Pizza, and then I immediately canceled the trial subscription to your magazine. The pizza was good; the emails are annoying.

It shouldn't take three or more attempts to unsubscribe from an email list. The last time it tried, I informed them that any future communications will be reported to my ISP as SPAM. And I intend to do so. I hear there's lots of money to be made in suing companies for email spam SPAM. It's interesting that a search of your website for "Report Spam" comes up with the result "Try again."

My hope is that as editors of a magazine that thrives on exploiting the flawed lives of celebrities, you would understand that this is best taken care of quietly. So, please locate your subscription department, or marketing, or whoever is responsible for these harassing emails, slap them upside the head and make sure they never send me one again. Your best response will be no response. A "We're sorry, problem fixed," email or a large check are also acceptable. Then leave me alone and never contact me again. Do not send me free magazines or offer discounted subscriptions, for they aren't even suitable for toilet paper.

The Response

"Thank you for contacting PEOPLE Customer Service.

We have removed your email information from our promotional listings.

If your information was already on our files, you may have been selected for a recent promotion. Please allow ten business days for this to become effective. After that, you will not receive future promotions.
If you are just providing us with your contact information, you will not be added to the promotional listings.

Sincerely,

Cynthia H"

The Verdict

This is a new section we're trying out. We've seen plenty of corporate negligence and arrogance thus far, with various levels of response to complaints. Here, we will rate various aspects of the consumer-business exchange, assigning ratings in each category from 1-10 with 1 being the lowest. Businesses will want to get as many "10s" as possible, except in the "severity of offense" category, where 10 is the worst.

Severity of the Offense: 5/10
Completely unsolicited, this type of spam would rank closer to a 10, but again, FFW filled out the form. He'd have been better off ordering actual Spam on his Papa John's pizza.



Yum!


Corporate Care Level: 3/10
They obviously didn't read too carefully, or they wouldn't have sent their moronic form letter. To be fair, have you seen People magazine? They clearly don't expect their subscribers to do any reading, either.

Adequacy of Response: 6/10
Ideally, a letter like this would cause them to stop this kind of marketing altogether. That big check would be nice, too. As it stands, the cessation of spamming a single non-customer gets them just north of the equator.

Overall: 3/10
Usually, Angry Customer letters are reserved for companies that I would at least have wanted to do business with in the past. The fact that we have to burn one on People, a second-rate gossip rag (seriously, Cosmo is like, soooo better...) means they've really screwed the pooch.