Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Vistaprint Spam

As an ex-engineering nerd, I have lots of email accounts (does anyone remember the free dialup email accounts from Juno?). I signed up for a Yahoo accounts early but moved on to Hotmail (before MSFT) and Gmail. Unfortunately, I used my Yahoo email as my Apple ID way back and since iTunes Store is such a PITA, I'm stuck with the old account. All this means is that I don't use the Yahoo account for anything else other than my Apple ID, and all the emails I receive are from iTunes Store.

So, a few weeks ago I started getting emails from a company called Vistaprint. As I mentioned before, I haven't used my Yahoo email to send anything for many years. Either they found my email from early Internet archives or Apple is selling out its customers. Anyway, at the bottom of the email, there's the obligatory "Unsubscribe" link.



If you click the link, it brings you to this page:



Huh? Typically when I click on the unsubscribe link/button on most other spam-type email, it simply unsubscribes (hopefully) me. Here it asks for my email (they have it already!) and an account password. Obviously I don't have one, and if you click on the "No, I am a new customer" button, it asks you to sign up. WTF? I have to create an account to unsubscribe to spam email?!

Of course, this seems a bit fishy so I Googled "Vistaprint" + "spam" and got lots of hits. Nice. I guess there's no way to unsubscribe from their spam since I'm not going to create an account and give them more info. I'll add them to the spam filter on my Yahoo account but that probably will not block their irritating emails when I check email from my iOS devices.

If any of my 3 readers receive email from Vistaprint, just delete it or add them to your spam filter. If you need printing services, check out Wet Ink Printing. I know the owner and he's a good guy.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My situation is similar, but even more sinister. I actually used Vistaprint to print some business cards a few years ago. When I registered for my Vistaprint account I used a unique email address (vistaprint@mydomain.com). Now I am receiving real spam (e.g. Viagra, phishine email, etc.) sent to that address. Either their datyabase was hacked, or more likely they sold their customer list to some even more slimy slimebags. Never purchasing from these guys again...

Unknown said...

Yep. I have been caught by 'VistaPrint'. Since ordering some business cards from them about 6 months ago I have been inundated with Spam e-mails from VistaPrint.

I have tried the unsubscribe link which proved to do nothing other than to confirm that their spam had actually reached you!

Their customer service are next to useless and will give you a continual runaround.

I had cancelled my account hoping to stop the spam but it did not work. Customer accounts ask me to log on to my account etc etc even though I had just spelled out that I do not have an account anymore so cannot log on. I write another e-mail detailing my name, address, etc as that should be enough for them to stop the spam.

I get a reply asking me for my name, address etc etc WTF!?

The last e-mail I got from them basically said 'Take it up with our legal dept' !

AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!

Derek

Penny said...

I have bought a few things from Vista Print. A product I bought from the company was a pen with my own design on it and once I received the pen, I noticed that the design was a little uneven.

Another time I had some 'free' business cards made up with the company and once the products arrived to my door, Vista Print sent me a pushy email, hoping I would 'buy' some more business cards from them.

Today I logged into my VP account to get myself some free postcards that the company were offering and decided that I might use some images that I had previously used. Once logged in, to look at my photos, I noticed someone else had hacked into my account and uploaded their own photos (with some Asian guy in the photo!) How crappy is that?! Not impressed :(. VP is dodgy as! Don't think whoever used my account bought anything, but its still not good!

Yes I hate their constant scammy emails.

Anonymous said...

Here is the contact info for someone in the marketing department at VistaPrint. Maybe forward her your spam.

Kathryn Huxtable
Channel Marketing Manager Mobility
+1.781.652.6300
khuxtable@vistaprint.com
VistaPrint USA Inc.
95 Hayden Ave
Lexington, MA 02421-7942
United States

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the info. I'm having a similar problem since ordering business cards with this company.