Circuit City Shares Your Address With Netpliance

An Anonymous Coward writes "People who have recently bought the i-Openers from Circuit City all over US have been receiving a letter from Netpliance (who makes the i-Openers). Circuit City has put it upon themselves to give out the personal information (names, phone numbers and addresses) to Netpliance without the consent of the customers. The letter and more information are available at i-opener-linux.net." I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but it's interesting that a retailer is helping a supplier track down customers. There's also the seemingly-perpetual i-opener issue of tweaking the Terms of Sale, after the sale.

Not just address.

[Pope Slackman]

Circuit City also appears to be 'sharing' credit card numbers.
Name and address I can /almost/ dismiss, but giving
out CC numbers is deplorable, and probably illegal.
There's more here:
http://www.i-opener-linux.net/index.php3?date=20 000418

I, for one, will NEVER buy anything from CC again,
I now consider them on the same level of trust as J. Random skr1p7k1ddi3.

--Kevin

=-=-=-=-=-=
"Just take another hit 'cause you don't give a f*ck-
You're a junkie and you're proud!"

Cash is king

[octover]

don't give them your name or anything and pay cold hard cash.

Bass Ackwards

[charlesc]

Check out the Terms of Sale - you have to agree to the transfer of your name, address, and phone number to Netpliance AFTER they've already been given your name, address, and phone number by Circuit City. What if you say no? Do they erase your information? Does Circuit City?

Re:Cash is king

[rageout]

very true.

I wouldn't put it past them...

[chaobell]

I'm a former Circuit Shi^H^H^HCity employee, and while I'd like to believe that this is perfectly harmless SOP, it just gives me the willies something fierce.

When I was a salesperson there, it was also SOP to get the personal info of anyone who purchased anything, regardless of how they paid--cash, check, credit, trade in first born son, whatever. In theory, anyway. In practice, we did take info for folks that used checks and credit cards (for what should be obvious reasons), and sometimes the system wanted us to take it for cash customers as well. If a cash customer said it was none of our business, I replied that I didn't blame 'em a bit, and proceeded to enter the phone number and address of the store and "Cash C Customer" as the name.

But--and here's the biggie--we didn't turn around and send that information to the manufacturers, which is what appears to be happening here. We might have told the manufacturers that x number of people bought y number of product z, but no personal information went to them. Say, for instance, you bought a boombox. Some corporate dingleberr--uh, dignitaries told Aiwa at the end of the month or year or whatever that we sold 150 of model CSDE320. We didn't tell them who bought them. That's what the product registration card in the box is for, and you have the option of tearing that up and setting fire to the bits if you so desire. What's happening here is that customers' info is being sent to the manufacturer of this product, whether the customer likes it or not. And I sure don't like that.

Re:This is NOT sinister

[chaobell]

I don't see how this is any different from Circuit City and Maytag contacting customers who placed an order for a dishwasher that (for whatever reason) they could not then deliver.

It's very different. In the case of your dishwasher, the manufacturer never contacts the customer if a product is discontinued. The manufacturer doesn't see the customer's info. Ever. If a product is discontinued while it's on special order, it's the salesperson's responsibility to call the customer, let him know his SO'd doohickey ain't coming in, and let him know he needs to come pick out another one. At no point in the process will Maytag contact the customer. At no point in the process will Maytag even see the customer's personal information. It stays between Circuit City and the customer. This is not the case with the Netpliance situation. To use your dishwasher analogy, this is akin to Maytag calling up a customer and saying "Hi, we stopped making the dishwasher you ordered so we're going to send you one that's just like it" without the customer ever getting to see the dishwasher.

Foo

[chaobell]

What would you tell them if x customers bought product "foo"? Are you kidding? The illustrious corporate dingleberries I mean dignitaries of Circuit City Inc. wouldn't have the slightest idea what "foo" was, aside from it being something Mr. T used to say.

I got "the letter"

[GeorgeH]

I got the letter from Netpliance, and before I even opened it, I had a pretty good idea what was inside. Sure enough, it was a letter telling me that my I-Opener would be a different model, and that new terms of sale had been imposed.

The interesting thing is that the letter is dated April 14, while I bought my I-Opener a week after the /. story ran (sometime in March). More amused then frightened, I called up two of my friends who also bought I-Openers and they both got "the letter" as well.

The next day I called up Netpliance, and left a voice mail for the woman who was dealing with this. She gave me a call back about 30 minutes later, and I discussed the letter with her. She said that since I had already purchased my I-Opener, the letter didn't apply to me. Fine by me. I then asked her about my name, address and credit card information.

She told me that Circuit Sh^H^HCity was selling them for Netpliance and that as a reseller, I had actually bought my I-Opener from Netpliance. Aparently I had still given my credit card to CC because she claimed that they didn't have that, only my name and address.

A couple interesting points:

A friend of mine who put down his money for an I-Opener, and then cancelled got the letter too. He cancelled his order after 4 weeks, and finding out that CC had been selling the stock they got in on the floor, without saving stock for people who had already put their money down.
This is a good reason to get a credit card. I've got a debit card, so if they decide to pull $500 out of my account for not using their ISP, I'll be in big trouble. My bank also won't let me block individual companies from making charges to the debit card. What was that Linux credit card again? :)

--

Sneaky and ugly

[dlc]

This is absolutely deplorable. Hook the customers, cancel the line containing the product they bought (bait and switch), and then offer a "new, improved" version -- that just happens to come with a monthly service fee. This is disgusting. Even Microsoft isn't this sneaky.

darren

Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]

my solution

[Signail11]

Send back their letter (in shreded, of course) in the reply envelope that they so graciously provided. Include an additional letter to the effect that:

"By opening this envelope, you agree to pay me $40 a month in perpetuity for the service of proofreading your letter. Additionally, you must give me your first born child and a selected blood sacrifice of your choice.

Thank you for your business."

This is NOT sinister

[P-Weasel]

Sorry, but this is a non-starter. This isn't some vast Orwellian conspiracy, it's just a retailer and a manufacturer contacting customers.

There may be backstory behind why the model was discontinued, but I don't see that as a YRO issue.

Circuit City has put it upon themselves to give out the personal information (names, phone numbers and addresses) to Netpliance without the consent of the customers ..[snip].. I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but it's interesting that a retailer is helping a supplier track down customers.

I don't see how this is any different from Circuit City and Maytag contacting customers who placed an order for a dishwasher that (for whatever reason) they could not then deliver. If Circuit City didn't help Netpliance track down their customers, then it would be more of a story. If Circuit City simply sent the 'new' Netpliance units and had people stuck with the service agreement without notice, then there would be a story here.

Circuit City has done some stupid things in its day, and I am no fan of theirs, but this isn't anything sinister. It looks to me like they may actually be trying to do something good for once.