Incessant spamming by Honda and Honda Village

[You can read the whole series of Honda Village postings here.]

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:

• December 20, 2007: Spam from “honda@honda.messages1.com” with the subject “Let’s all go green this holiday season”. We clicked on the unsubscribe link, which started with http://links.mkt015.com/.
• February 7, 2008: Spam from “khunt@hondavillage.com” with the subject “Honda Village Pre-Pesidents [sic] Sale Event”. There were no unsubscribe instructions (a violation of the Federal CAN-SPAM act!). I emailed khunt@hondavillage.com the following:
  
  My wife asked you to stop spamming her after the last message you sent. You just sent her another message today. Please remove [elided] from any and all Honda Village databases and email lists immediately. Any further bulk email messages from you will be reported as spam to your network service providers.
  
  I received no response. Note that there was at least one spam message before this one, about which we also complained to khunt@hondavillage.com, for which I don’t have the exact date.
• August 12, 2008: Email from tony@hondavillage.com with the subject “A message from Village Automotive Group” thanking my wife for her recent visit to the service department. I responded, “Please remove my wife’s email address from your database and do not use it again.” I received no response.
• December 5, 2008: Email from tonys@hondavillage.com with the subject “Happy Holidays from Honda Village”. I clicked the “http://www.autoloop.us/” unsubscribe link at the bottom.
• March 26, 2009: Spam from “honda@honda.messages1.com” with the subject “Honda News – 2010 Honda Insight Now Available”. Again, I unsubscribed via the http://links.mkt015.com/ link.
• September 24, 2009: Spam from honda@reminder.honda.com with the subject “Valuable Honda Service Offers”. I unsubscribed using the http://dealercommpref.honda.com/ link.
• November 17, 2009: Spam from “honda@reminder.honda.com” with the subject “Valuable Honda Service Offers”. I didn’t even bother to click the unsubscribe link this time.

That’s at least eight different spamming incidents and seven different attempts to get the spam to stop.

I don’t want to hear any buck-passing. I don’t want you to tell me to contact the dealer to make them stop spamming me. I expect you to contact the dealer to make them stop spamming me.

Furthermore, I expect you to make Honda corporate stop spamming me as well. The two messages above from honda@honda.messages1.com both appear to have from Honda corporate, and the second one was sent over a year after I told Honda corporate to stop spamming us.

I suppose if Honda corporate thinks there’s nothing wrong with spamming customers, it’s understandable that one of your dealers things it’s OK too. The fish rots from the head.

While I’m taking the trouble to write to you, I will mention that this repeated spamming is not the only slimy practice in which Honda Village engages. When we bought our Odyssey, the salesman blatantly lied to us about the coverage of the “paint dent repair” warranty, then ignored my repeated complaints about the misrepresentation, then promised to refund most of the cost of the policy, then never sent the promised check. I had to send them a Massachusetts Chapter 93a letter threatening a lawsuit for triple damages to get them to refund my money. The full story is told on my blog at http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/hv1.

In addition to this, the Honda Village sales department has been sending junk mail that is specifically and carefully designed to hide the source of the mail and make gullible people think that it’s an important tax-related document, so that they will open it rather than throwing it away. This is so reprehensible and slimy that every time I think about it, I’m angry that I ever gave Honda Village a cent of my money. This story, too, is told in more detail on my blog, including photos of the offending envelopes, at http://blog.kamens.brookline.ma.us/~jik/wordpress/hv2.

Does Honda condone spamming, lying, and deceptive sales practices?

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens