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Vertical Response. Awesome.

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I got some spam earlier today from someone who used Vertical Response’s mail service to send it out. On occasion, if I think the mail provider might actually do something about it, I’ll report the message. That’s what I did with this one.

Most of the time I’ll get a form letter back from some autoresponder telling me that they’ll look into it but that they can’t give me any specifics. That’s the mediocre response I was expecting here, too.

Instead, George and Vertical Response blew me away. (emphasis added below)

First, let me apologize that you encountered this kind of problem with a company using our service. That is simply unacceptable. I have opened a full investigation into the account as a result of your complaint. We have no tolerance for the sending of unsolicited mail, and we will not allow this sort of behavior to continue. I can verify that your address has been unsubscribed from their account with us.

Please also note that VerticalResponse does not maintain mailing lists of any sort for sale, rent, distribution or any other purpose. We are an Email Service Provider, companies use our service to send email the same way an individual might email someone through Yahoo. Our clients provide the addresses (limited to their own use) and must sign an agreement that everyone on their list requested information directly and specifically from their company - meaning no purchased, rented, borrowed, harvested or third party lists of any kind are allowed under any circumstances whatsoever. Clients who violate this policy are banned.

We hate spam and work extremely hard to keep it off our network. Thanks for bringing this problem to our attention, and please let me know if you have any comments, concerns or questions. All my direct contact info is below.

Nice to see a little customer service in the world.

Josh Morgan
December 16, 2008 4:41 PM

Nice to see a company reacting well. They should get serious props for a solid response.

Adam Kalsey
December 16, 2008 4:44 PM

And they're kicking ass on Twitter, too. http://twitter.com/VR4SmallBiz Posted a note about this blog post on twitter and they responded. Looking through their twitter stream, they seem like a business doing twitter right.

sean
December 17, 2008 1:55 AM

I call that an Appropriate Response.

Jeremy Meyers
December 26, 2008 9:33 AM

This kinda reminds me of Chris Rock's bit about guys who pay their child support and use that to show what good fathers they are. You're SUPPOSED to pay child support.

Mark Coffey
July 29, 2009 12:40 PM

I just got the same response from them - word for word. Good form letter. Almost had me fooled too. Vertical Response still suck.

Adam Kalsey
July 29, 2009 1:22 PM

Of course it's a form letter. There's nothing wrong with having templates for your common communications. That doesn't make the customer service any less excellent.

LD
August 6, 2009 2:23 PM

I got spam from them too, and got the same form letter. Considering spammers are obviously using their service quite a bit, I don't see how customer service makes up for it.

Rachel
January 21, 2011 5:29 PM

Oh look, they're automated e-mail hasn't changed in three years, and neither have their practices. Here's an e-mail I received from a similary complaint to these fools today: "Hello, First, let me apologize that you encountered this kind of problem with a company using our service. That is simply unacceptable. I have opened a full investigation into the Amazon.com/Amazon Services account as a result of your complaint. We have no tolerance for the sending of unsolicited mail, and we will not allow this sort of behavior to continue. I can verify that your address has been unsubscribed from their account with us. Please also note that VerticalResponse does not maintain mailing lists of any sort for sale, rent, distribution or any other purpose. We are an Email Service Provider, companies use our service to send email the same way an individual might email someone through Yahoo. Our clients provide the addresses (limited to their own use) and must sign an agreement that everyone on their list requested information directly and specifically from their company - meaning no purchased, rented, borrowed, harvested or third party lists of any kind are allowed under any circumstances whatsoever. Clients who violate this policy are banned. We hate spam and work extremely hard to keep it off our network. Thanks for bringing this problem to our attention, and please let me know if you have any comments, concerns or questions. All my direct contact info is below. Sincerely, George Sukara Email Delivery & Policy Enforcement VerticalResponse, Inc. abuse@verticalresponse.com 501 Second Street, suite 700 San Francisco, CA 94107" Next time I'll save my breath, add the company that unadvisedly used their services to my List Of Companies Never To Use Again, create a message rule to delete future crap, and forget about it. Someone really needs to put these spamming idiots in jail, but until that day my spam filter can at least deal with the consequences of their anti-social actions.

This discussion has been closed.

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