Saturday, April 08, 2006

Virgin Wines are spammers

I can't remember how it all started. I think I entered some competition that offered the chance to win some free wine (how could I refuse?) and Virgin Wines got hold of my email address. Soon I was getting an email every week or so exhorting me to purchase a case of wine. I've no idea whether Virgin Wines provide decent wine or not, but the fact I've got a Majestic Wines about five minutes away means I wasn't tempted to purchase anything from them, so I sent an email to unsubscribe@virginwines.com (after all they are reputable company, right?). Then, nothing. the emails kept coming. So I sent another. And the emails still didn't stop. Then I got an email from the founder of Virgin Wines, not apologizing but offering me more wine to buy. So I replied directly to him telling him his unsubscribe functionality didn't work. I then got an email from Customer Services saying "Thank you for contacting Virgin Wines and we have arranged for the email address you have provided to be removed from our mailing list which will be actioned within the next few days.". So that was the end of it? Well, no. I then received what looked like a personal email from the founder saying "Dear Christopher I thought that, as we were warning our staff not to lose out on last weeks free case offer, we should do the same for you!Please don't hang about - when the free cases are gone, they are gone! Go to www.virginwines.com/reminder9 Cheers, Rowan Gormley Founder Virgin Wines" I presumed I was actually being offered some free wine at this point, perhaps as an apology for all the emails. But looking at the offer showed it was just another attempt to get me signed up to Virgin Wines. OK, I'd get a free case but only if I bought another case... OK, the price looks pretty reasonable, coming to just over £3 a bottle, but my corner shop does a nice red at £10 for 3 bottles. Then today I got yet another email offering me more wine at bargain prices. Frankly I don't care how good Virgin Wines are, they are spammers, so I will not be buying any wine from them, ever. And perhaps their PR department will see this and realise their mistake. Or they'll sue me...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have had exactly the same thing - I was scammed into giving my e-mail address by a offer that was pretty worthless, then all attempts at unsubscribing failed. Virginwines is linked to the supposedly impartial Trainline website, not that they tell you that. Keep well clear!