E-gift Certificates = Spam? 25
vincewazalooski writes "Good read in NY Times Circuits section today about how spam filters at Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. often interpret gift certificates from Amazon et. al. as spam. Worst part is, you might send a gift cert to someone, they never get it and you never know."
OT: Gift certificates (Score:2, Interesting)
About the only response I've ever heard is that it shows more thought than cash, but still:
1) Even if it shows more thought to give someone a gift certificate, to, say, "CD Hut", because you know they like CDs, just not which ones: you've now deprived them of the ability to get CDs from any other store -- even if CD Hut doesn't carry the ones they want.
2) For a large store that sells lots of unrelated items (like Amazon), it doesn't seem like you're showing any additional thought above and beyond cash.
Re:OT: Gift certificates (Score:1)
The conclusion I came to is that the gift certificate is just that -- a GIFT. People see/handle cash virtually every day of their life, be it physical or electronical. To stuff a few bills in an envelope not only doesn't draw as much intrigue (oooh
To each their own, but I'd be far more compelled to promptly use a gift certificate as opposed to greenbacks.
Re:OT: Gift certificates (Score:2)
Re:OT: Gift certificates (Score:1)
Purposeful restriction. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course. (Score:2)
Any spam filtering software worth it's salt should at least take note of those gift certificates. Okay, so just this once it's genuine, but how is the software supposed to know that?
Spam Filter (Score:2)
Amazed:1
Surprise:1
Gift:1
Hook:1
Software:1
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spam weight = 6
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analysis complete: Post is Spam
Re:Spam Filter (Score:2)
Don't delete spam... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't delete spam... (Score:3, Informative)
It's even worse: you *can be sure* that your filters will not work perfectly. So the above is a sound advise: move suspected spam to a junkfolder, and check occasionally.
because.... (Score:1, Insightful)
no, really, they do...
Giving money out is impersonal. Giving a gift certificate at least gives some hint that you know and care about what the person wants.
Giving a gift isn't necessarily some consumer strategized targeting of your "friend units" in order to stimulate "maximum happiness" growth kinesis.
I'd rather give someone a clump of my own waste as a present than hand them, essentially, purely what I worked for: power units.
A family member giving cash is different - it's like 'pooling the resources for the empire'...
the only exception i make to giving cash is when its a pooled effort from people who don't know each other. Usually that involves a predicated event: "GIVE ME CASH" or distance: long lost auntie mysteria doesn't know what else to do...
so rather than 20 people buying you a $10 CD (or gift certificate) they can all give you cash, you can buy your $200 present, and you can send 'em all a photo of yourself with it saying a polite version of "boo-yeah!"
But yeah, here's $20 dude is bottom of the totem of "buying a gift > gift certificate > money"
Amazon's snail mail gift certificates (Score:2)
Yes, that's one of the consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
I suppose one answer to gift certificate is to have them emailed to you and then forward them to the recepiant personally. That's what I typically do.
-Brent
Re:Yes, that's one of the consequences (Score:2)
Spam filters by Scrooge? (Score:3, Informative)
Some notes I sent friends about whatever got screened by my own filter (on bcc) as spam because I put a $ in the subject field. Brilliant bayesian filter my eye.
In any case, the gift certificate should REQUIRE the recipient to check in at their site to confirm receipt. If no confirmation is rec'd, the merchant could try again, then notify the sender with the option to void the certificate. This is easier than tabulating receipts yourself because (1) that's work and (2) not everyone says thank-you (hey, I'm catching up!).
And The Worst Part Is... (Score:2, Funny)
Text of Article (Score:1, Informative)
By MICHELLE SLATALLA
THE day before my brother's birthday I felt a bolt of panic. My brain translated my primitive terror: need gift.
Nothing says "I love you but don't have time to shop for you" like a gift certificate. So I whisked over to Amazon.com. Sweet relief flooded through me minutes later, after I received e-mail confirmation that the $30 electronic gift certificate I had purchased had been e-mailed to my brother's Hotmail address in time for his early-November birthday.
I was a good sister.
A few days later, the phone rang. "You are a bad sister," my brother said.
The gift certificate never reached his In box. He assumed I had forgotten his birthday. Worse, this was my second unsuccessful attempt to send an Amazon.com gift certificate to his household. (My sister-in-law's birthday was in February.)
"This joke is getting old," my brother said. "If you don't want to celebrate birthdays with presents, be up front. We're adults."
"I sent them, I swear," I said. "Both times."
"Then where are they?" he asked.
Good question. I decided to investigate the issue of the Missing Gift Certificates not only to salvage my honor but also as a service to last-minute online Christmas shoppers everywhere. With only six shopping days left, retailers are touting electronic gift certificates as the most reliable way to guarantee last-minute delivery.
What I learned is bad news for Christmas shoppers like me who believed that hype.
It turns out that gift certificates may never make it to recipients whose e-mail service allows them to set up stringent junk mail filters; retailers say the most common are Hotmail, Yahoo and America Online. Gift certificates may not get past spam detectors because they are generated in bulk and tend to be impersonal, like junk mail.
A spokeswoman for Hotmail explained how it would work. Not to name names, but let's say an account holder named Dan Slatalla sets his filter to the highest level. Then only e-mail from known contacts in his address list will arrive in his In box. Other mail will be deleted without his seeing it, if he chooses, or routed to a junk mail folder that he usually forgets to scan before Hotmail periodically cleans it out.
I went on the offensive.
"You set your filter to Exclusive!" I told him. If he had set it to one of two lower levels - Default or Enhanced - the e-mail would have made it through. "It's your fault," I said. "That's not a very giving attitude," my brother said. "I'm the victim, remember? What you should be asking is how many other innocent brothers have not received birthday gift certificates."
How widespread is the problem? It's hard to know, because gift certificate sellers say they don't keep track of it and if they did, they sure wouldn't tell me. But many say it's not a big deal.
"With Hotmail and Yahoo and a number of free e-mail services, we see it once in a while, but we have customer service to take care of it quickly," said Edward Brookshire, president of GiveAnything.com, a site that sells gift certificates that can be redeemed at hundreds of partner merchants. If the sender contacts the company and says that the gift certificate never got through, he said, it will resend it to whatever address the sender wants.
But no one denies that there is a problem. "Hotmail tends to take us as spam and throws it away - I've had a couple of people that happened with," said an Amazon.com customer service representative who identified herself as Tammy. "Usually, I just resend it to a different address."
Other gift-certificate sellers take a more aggressive approach.
"We have test accounts set up on Hotmail and Yahoo and we send e-mail to them to see if it gets marked as junk mail,'' said Michael Ahern, the president of
GiftCertificates.com. These tools report what the thing was that set it off. "We are getting good at having e-mail not look like junk mail,'' he said.
So what does all this mean for last-minute Christmas shoppers? Don't assume an electronic gift certificate is foolproof. Online retailers said the safe thing to do is to quiz a potential recipient about his junk mail filters. I don't know about you, but I don't consider this a convenient or painless way to send a gift.
What do you do if a gift certificate doesn't get through? First, you will have to confirm this yourself, because retailers cite concern over the recipient's privacy as a reason not to confirm receipt. Next, you will have to ask the recipient to remove the filter. Then you have to call customer service and ask to have the gift certificate resent.
"Change your filters," I told my brother.
"This is getting a little ridiculous, don't you think?" he responded.
He had a point. I could also ask Amazon to resend it to me and then I could forward it to him. But why should I have to? Why couldn't I just get a refund? That's when I learned even more sad news. Many online gift certificate sellers - Amazon.com included - refuse to refund a purchase, even if a gift certificate remains unspent.
"Once it has been sent to the recipient, it's essentially the property of the recipient and not the sender," said Patty Smith, an Amazon.com spokeswoman.
But Amazon.com had given me a refund once before, for the gift certificate that never reached my sister-in-law.
"We do allow customer service representatives a bit of discretion, which is why you were able to get one refund," Ms. Smith said.
So sometimes the unspent gift certificate is the property of the recipient but other times it's not? In my case, Amazon.com left the decision on my brother's gift certificate to a customer service representative who signed his e-mail "Jason H." He wrote: "I'm sorry, but because this gift certificate has already been delivered to the recipient, we are unable to cancel the order."
"Tell Jason H. it was not delivered," the recipient said.
"I don't think he really wants to have a conversation," I said. "The reply address on his e-mail is to a generic 'Orders' mailbox."
"Maybe you should have read the fine print before buying," the recipient suggested helpfully.
My brother was right.
I learned one lesson. I won't send a last-minute Christmas gift for my brother. But if I did? I noticed that Williams-Sonoma (williamssonoma.com) guarantees on-time delivery for candy and chocolate orders placed by 9 a.m. Pacific time Dec. 23. And if the food doesn't show up? You can get a refund.
Re:Text of Article (Score:2)
"Once it has been sent to the recipient, it's essentially the property of the recipient and not the sender," said Patty Smith, an Amazon.com spokeswoman.
Legally speaking, this is not true. The value represented by the certificate is only the property of the recipient once it has been placed beyond the recall of the giver. If it is possible for the giver to recall it, it's not the property of the recipient yet.
In other words, refusal to refund cannot be based on the property being that of the recipient. Rather, the property is that of the recipient only if the store will not, under any circumstances, cancel the certificate and refund the money to the giver.
But Amazon's widely blocked anyway (Score:2)
There are widely deployed individual, private blocks on amazon.com anyway due to their habit of spamming their users (at least they used to have such a habit, but I'm not willing to find out if they've reformed), and probably also because of their excessive patenting. Sending a gift certificate from Amazon is thus an extraordinarily stupid thing to do - there are good reasons why it might never have a chance to get there.
Even without the blocks - seriously, should you trust what amounts to cash to email without having any way to know it was safely delivered? If you do, you get what you deserve.
Hotmail filters out SMS as well... (Score:1)
I eventually realized that this is because I have a username registered with my phone, so when I send a message, it's from "username@provider.net", whereas the default is "phone_number@provider.net".
Apparently, Hotmail's spam filter, by default, rejects messages from addresses with numerical usernames.