Time Out Magazine Spam Mystery
Desperate times make people do desperate things.
I’m looking for a new flat in central London. I was pretty damn surprised to get spam email promoting Time Out’s new flat finder site.
Here’s the email I received to the unique, anonymous email address used in my Craigslist ‘flat wanted’ ad:
Does this read like an email from a real user? The the low-rent sales copy, bolding of features and promo code scream ‘no’.
Time Out have contacted me to deny that it is from them. Which begs the question: who is responsible?
Update: Time Out’s Charlie Sefi has provided this statement:
Time Out is absolutely committed to protecting the privacy of our users and wider audience. We strive to operate with integrity and independence, and if we ever learnt that one of our third party suppliers was sending out communications like this on our behalf we would act swiftly to ensure that any such activity is immediately stopped.
Obviously I too would be really keen to find out the source of the email, and will continue to try and find out its origin from our end.
How hard is it to find out? It’s the agency that they gave promo code EXP1XESP1M to! Tut tut 🙂
Never did get to the bottom of this. Time Out never could explain, and the agency that provides their white label service deny all knowledge, too.
Said company claim that the promo code is only used in a past CRM email.
Time Out is just denying it. Most people would’ve just jumped on the offer. They didn’t expect a more sensible user is at the other end lol.
If Time Out weren’t behind it, I’ll bet they wish that they had been.