November 17, 2009
American Honda Motor Company, Incorporated
Honda Automobile Customer Service
Fax: (310) 783-3023
To whom it may concern:
I sent you the attached letter via fax on November 17. You did not give me the courtesy of a reply, but at least the spam directed at my wife’s email address seems to have stopped.
Unfortunately, now Honda Village is spamming MY email address, jik@kamens.brookline.ma.us, instead of my wife’s.
I received in the mail today a letter from E. Peter Mullane, the lawyer whom Village Automotive Group has apparently retained to respond to my Chapter 93a letter about their deceptive advertising practices.
It is worth noting that E. Peter Mullane’s chief claim to fame is that he is one of the lawyers who defended John J. Connolly Jr., the former FBI agent who was convicted in federal court of racketeering, obstruction of justice, murder and conspiracy to commit murder and will be spending the rest of his life in prison. Nice!
I am not going to publish Mullane’s letter here, because there are all kinds of legal issues with that, and… well… Mullane is a lawyer, y’know? I will, however, publish the response I just sent him, from which you can get a pretty good idea of the claims he made in his letter. Enjoy!
January 22, 2010
Ray Ciccolo
Village Automotive Group
75 North Beacon Street
Allston, MA 02134-1912
Dear Mr. Ciccolo,
Once again, I find myself sending you a M.G.L. Chapter 93a letter because of Honda Village’s deceptive trade practices.
In June 2009, Honda Village started sending me promotional materials in envelopes that look like this:
[image elided; see my previous blog posting]
I am not going to waste my time explaining why this is clearly intended to deceive the recipient about the source, importance, and content of these mailings. I know this is so; you know this is so; the methods of deception and intent to deceive are obvious. I’m quite certain that a judge will agree.
I received a number of these mailings before I finally decided to ask you to stop sending them. On October 15, I sent a message through the contact form on your Web site which read as follows:
(Do not add my email address to any bulk email lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my email address only so that you can respond to this request. NO OTHER USE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)
(Do not add my postal mailing address to any direct-marketing lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my postal address only so that you can remove me from your direct-marketing list as described below. NO OTHER USE OF MY POSTAL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)
For months now, you have been sending me junk mail in envelopes that you have intentionally designed to deceive recipients. You’ve made them look like some sort of official certified or registered mail, and you’ve intentionally left your company name and return address off of the envelopes. These envelopes are clearly designed to get people to open them, when they would just throw them in the trash if it was obvious they were from you.
This kind of deceptive direct-mail advertising is exceedingly slimy. It is distressing to me that I purchased a vehicle from a company that employs such slimy tactics. You have proven to me, unfortunately not for the first time, that my initial impression, that you were different from all the other slimy car dealers out there, was wrong.
Whatever mailing list I am on to be sent these slimy mailings — please get me off of it. Right now. And leave me off of it. Permanently.
Honda Village did not have the courtesy to reply. Furthermore, since I sent the message quoted above, I have received at least two more of these offensive mailings, the most recent one today.
If you had stopped sending these when I asked you to stop, I would have left it at that. But since you didn’t, I have decided to teach you a lesson not only about not sending junk mail to people who have asked you to stop, but also about engaging in deceptive trade practices.
November 17, 2009
American Honda Motor Company, Incorporated
Honda Automobile Customer Service
Fax: (310) 783-3023
To whom it may concern:
HONDA HAS BEEN SPAMMING US FOR TWO YEARS DESPITE OUR REPEATED REQUESTS FOR YOU TO STOP. This is completely unacceptable. You need to make it stop.
In mid-2007, we bought an Odyssey from Honda Village in Newton, MA. While shopping for it, my wife made the mistake of giving the dealer her email address ([elided]) on a pre-sales Web form. Since then, we’ve been spammed many times, despite repeated attempts to make it stop. Here’s a sampling: (more…)
Since I first wrote about them in June, Honda Village has sent me many more pieces of junk mail enclosed in envelopes that do not have their name or return address on them and that have been intentionally designed to make the recipient think they are some sort of official business so that the recipient will open them rather than throwing them away.
As I wrote then, I consider this type of direct marketing to be exceedingly slimy. I finally got annoyed enough about it today that I’ve sent Honda Village this message through their Web site. We’ll see if they actually listen.
(Do not add my email address to any bulk email lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my email address only so that you can respond to this request. NO OTHER USE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)
(Do not add my postal mailing address to any direct-marketing lists as a result of this submission. I am providing you with my postal address only so that you can remove me from your direct-marketing list as described below. NO OTHER USE OF MY POSTAL ADDRESS IS AUTHORIZED.)
For months now, you have been sending me junk mail in envelopes that you have intentionally designed to deceive recipients. You’ve made them look like some sort of official certified or registered mail, and you’ve intentionally left your company name and return address off of the envelopes. These envelopes are clearly designed to get people to open them, when they would just throw them in the trash if it was obvious they were from you.
This kind of deceptive direct-mail advertising is exceedingly slimy. It is distressing to me that I purchased a vehicle from a company that employs such slimy tactics. You have proven to me, unfortunately not for the first time, that my initial impression, that you were different from all the other slimy car dealers out there, was wrong.
Whatever mailing list I am on to be sent these slimy mailings — please get me off of it. Right now. And leave me off of it. Permanently.
Thank you.
Long-readers of my blog may remember the experience my wife and I had when we bought a minivan from Honda Village in Newton, MA. To summarize, the salesman from whom we bought our van outright lied to us about one of the warranties he convinced us to buy, then ignored my complaint letters about it, then promised a refund check which they never sent. I had to threaten legal action to get them to refund the cost of that warranty as promised.
Well, I’m sorry to say that Honda Village is up to their slimy sales tactics again. (more…)
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