Dr Foster and Smith is Abusing Customer Email Addresses
There comes a time where every company deserves being called out for their bad practices, today is one of those days. After all we are the customers that keep them in business.
I have a dog, Sebastian, and he loves his rawhide and toys. For the holidays we got him a new bed for the home office so he has a place to chill all day while I try to make the money that supports the lifestyle he has become accustomed to. I made my purchase through Dr Foster and Smith as I have many times before. I have had an account with Dr. Foster and Smith for many years now, and my contact preference has always been the same “Don’t contact me.” Well today I get an email from them marketing Flea and Tick supplies. I scrolled to the bottom of the email to click the unsubscribe button, and didn’t find it…. but look what I found instead.
A one time email huh? So that doesn’t make it SPAM? I don’t think so. Why is it that these companies do not understand that when you send ANY kind of email to someone one who has requested that they not be sent email, it’s SPAM. It’s even worse when you are spamming users that have opted out of email communications, to get them to sign up for email communications. I have seen several unfriendly tactics employed by these companies:
- Unflag all users that have opted out of email communications and blame it on a “database error”.
- Create new newsletters (that are practically the same as the old newsletters and have the same information in them), and by default sign everyone up for the new newsletters.
However this is new by me. Congratulations Dr. Foster and Smith, you just gave PetSmart more business.
At least Sebastian enjoys his bed… what a life 
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Comments
I had to call customer service to have them delete my email address. I appreciate you taking the time to reply here, and I hop this was indeed a fluke.
Thank you.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Matthew,
Just a quick note…not to rankle you with another communication, but to apologize for a communication to you that you did not want to receive.
We have fields set up so that such things shouldn’t happen, but somehow yours slipped through. We apologize.
We do work hard to respond to all customer requests, and to honor such requests. But we failed on this one and apologize.
Sincerely,
Gordon Magee
Internet Marketing and Analysis Manager
Drs. Foster & Smith