Years ago, when our kids were much younger, we subscribed to monthly “Tinker Crate”s from KiwiCo. It was a neat idea, and the kids enjoyed some of the crates.
However, by May 2020 that was years in the past, and we were not going to be buying anything else from KiwiCo, so I unsubscribed from their marketing emails.
A month later, I got another one. I unsubscribed again.
Then the emails stopped, for more than six years, until KiwiCo spammed me again earlier this month.
Now, when a company that makes its money from sending people marketing emails stops emailing a former customer for more than six years, and then all of the sudden starts again, that means the customer’s unsubscribe request worked, and then stopped working.
For that, there are only four possible explanations:
- something went wrong that caused people to receive emails who had previously told the company they didn’t want them;
- a person at the company caused it by accident;
- a person at the company caused it on purpose without the knowledge of company management; or
- a person at the company caused it on purpose with the knowledge and consent of company management.
If a customer contacts the company and complains about this, and it was caused by one of the first three explanations, then the logical, ethical, business-savvy thing to do is to acknowledge that something bad happened, apologize, express regret, and confirm that steps have been taken to address the situation and ensure that neither that customer nor others will receive more emails they’d unsubscribed from.
If, however, it’s because the company has decided to spam people who unsubscribed, then the business-savvy thing to do is to obfuscate, refuse to explain or admit what happened, and just unsubscribe (again) customers who complain even though that doesn’t address the root cause or solve the problem for other customers.
By now you’ve probably figured out that I complained to KiwiCo about the spam, and they responded by obfuscating and refusing to explain or admit what happened.
They also repeatedly told me they’d “solved the problem” by unsubscribing me, even after I explained repeatedly that what I was asking for was an explanation for why they started spamming me again after more than six years of honoring my unsubscribe request, and an assurance that they had also unsubscribed others who were incorrectly resubscribed. These, of course, they refused to give.
If KiwiCo were a huge corporation then I might believe that my complaint never actually reached anyone with the authority to give me a straight answer. But they’re only ~100 employees, small enough for everybody to know everybody else. They saw my complaint, and they chose to respond with obfuscatory bullshit.
So, KiwiCo is willing to resubscribe people who have previously unsubscribed from their spam, which is slimy, and they’re willing to lie when called out on it, which is even more slimy. Therefore, if you don’t want to do business with a slimy company, you should avoid them.
