Consumerist Forums moderator Brian is moderating a problem of his own. His mother, who is mourning the recent loss of their dog Mandy, is receiving a relentless flood of spam email from 1-800 PetMeds with titles such as: “Take Mandy on a picnic this Memorial Day Weekend!” and “Summer showers are around the corner, make sure Mandy is dressed properly!” Considering the fact that Mandy passed only a few days before, the emails are causing Brian’s mother a great amount of grief and tears. He has set up email filters to block the email, but like an intelligent virus the email changes its signature to bypass the filters. Unfortunately, he cannot simply filter the word “Mandy” because his mother is still sending and receiving email regarding her demise. His letter, inside…
Over the past few days, I’ve been having a real problem with 1-800 PetMeds. The odd thing is, it’s not over an order that I placed, it’s with their e-mails. A while back, my mother started ordering heartworm pills from 1-800 PetMeds, because they were about $10 cheaper than the vets. Because of ordering them online, and forgetting to uncheck an e-mail subscriber list box, she got e-mails about special offers and such. No big deal there, until this week.
On Wednesday, we had to put our dog (named Mandy) down. On Friday, my mother was checking her e-mail and had an e-mail from 1-800 PetMeds with the subject “Take Mandy [our dog] on a picnic this Memorial Day Weekend!” 2 days after we put Mandy down, this e-mail comes. It was enough to get my mother worked up into tears. I had her log into her e-mail, and I clicked the unsubscribe link at the bottom, so we wouldn’t get any more e-mails from them – we just don’t need that.
Saturday, she checks her e-mail again, and a second message: “Is Mandy dealing with Spring allergies?” Again, my mother broke into tears. I was furious. I clicked unsubscribe to NOT get their e-mails anymore. So I set up a filter to automatically delete 1-800 PetMeds e-mails. I had to be specific on the filter, so I put a ban on from 1-800 P* (wildcard) and 1-800 PetMeds.
Sunday, yet ANOTHER e-mail: “Summer showers are around the corner, make sure Mandy is dressed properly!” This time, my mother didn’t break down into tears, but this has gone too far. The from in the e-mail: Your PetMed Alert. I blocked that, but who knows when the next e-mail is going to come?
I called them and spoke with a representative on the phone. She looked up the account information and verified that we were NOT taken off the mailing list. I asked her to do so, and she said it would take 7-10 days to remove us from the mailing list. That seems like s bit much, but if it will stop the e-mails from coming, it will be worth it.
I’ve never had this problem trying to get rid of e-mails that I don’t want before. It’s not like these are spam, these are notices from a company that we bought something from again.
I hope that the woman on the phone removing the e-mail address from the list is enough to stop them from coming. Otherwise, I’m not sure what other options I have with 1-800 PetMeds.
We’re sorry to hear about your loss, Brian. According to the CAN-SPAM act of 2003, the law allows 10 business days for businesses to comply with opt-out requests. Hopefully, the spam emails will stop sooner rather than later.
1800 PetMeds Problem [Consumerist Forums]
The CAN-SPAM Act: Requirements for Commercial Emailers [FTC]
(Photo: Getty)
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I used to be a customer of TracFone. After I changed phone providers, I clicked the ‘unsubscribe’ link in their promotional emails to request that they stop sending me those emails. It had no effect. I kept getting emails for over a month. Kept clicking the link and kept getting an unsubscribe confirmation but the emails never stopped.
The only way to get off was to email their abuse department and threaten to submit every single email from there on to all the spam blacklists I could think of.
The emails ceased from that point on.
@chiieddy: Yeah, another whiny post when nothing has been done incorrectly.
What’s next, a post about how someone’s still getting junk mail for their relative that died yesterday?
@Rhynoo: Have you ever owned a pet or was that a joke? A dog becomes family when you live with him/her for 12 years.
@noquarter: All you people complaining about how you hate this place’s headlines … why are you still here, then?
@Buran: That is not relevant to this discussion. Did you bring it up because you really can’t understand why someone might have dealings with an entity that they don’t think is perfect, or was it just a red herring?
depending on the filtering software you may want to set it to check the body of the e-mail for PetMed.
Also you may want to try blocking they by blocking the IP address the messages are sent from instead of blocking a specific address.
@Whitey Fisk:
Not funny.
@Mistrez_Mish:
What has this to do with is issue, you dim bint?
Nobody gives a shit about your park-walks with your doggie.
Go away, you thumb-sucking narcissist. Scram.
@Buran: Nice logic error. I <3 the ol ‘love it or leave it.’
@Noris: It’s not a logic error. If you hate the site THAT much, why keep coming? It’s a big Internet.
@noquarter: No, I deal with things that aren’t perfect but the blame the victim/blame the editor/blame SOMEONE whining is out of hand. I guess we aren’t allowed to express dissatisfaction with commenters around here, only the editors who seem to exist to be complained at.
Time to block the @whatever.com domain the emails were coming from…not some string in the subject line.
As much as I hate email and vendors that use email, the Mom gave the email addy and dog’s name to the vendor. Blame starts with mom. Give the vendor a chance to remove the email addy. If the addy is not removed then we can start blaming the vendor.
Forget blocking the domain.
Set up a new email rule on your computer, to automatically trash anything with “petmeds” in the subject or body. Voila!
As for “made my mother cry,” I still get snail-mail addressed to my own mother, dead over 2 years, and the rare one for my dad who passed on 8 years ago … I’m sure I’ll be getting things about my pet when the pet goes … that’s what we get for loving someone, it will pass.
so you can’t block the dogs name because she is still talking about the dog actively via email…. yet she can complain about 1800petmeds using her dogs name?
my mom is just as bad a hypocrite.
@nox: Not so much outgoing e-mail as incoming condolences. A filter that would block the dog’s name in either the subject or body would have filtered out some family e-mail.
@e.varden: What has this to do with is issue, you dim bint?
Nobody gives a shit about your park-walks with your doggie.
Go away, you thumb-sucking narcissist. Scram
Ouch – that hurt really, it did. I’ve read plenty of vapid b.s. commentary on this site and yes, a nice smattering of pricks who have nothing better to do than try oh so very hard to piss people off. I’m very proud of you, sweetie. You’ve managed not to comment on the article at all and act like a complete douche bag.
I know, you must be right, it was horribly selfish of me to comment on another person’s comment. I’m very ashamed.
@Garbanzo: That was exactly why I was thinking! Seven days to remove a customer is crap. It’s instantaneous to do it, and there’s no need to have a human look over it. They’re just trying to sucker another sale out over the next 7 to 10 days. Even a 386 could do it fast, so there’s really no excuse.
i send every piece of spam to spam@uce.gov i just wonder what happens with the info that i send to this address
Why don’t you just filter out all mail from or mentioning 1-800petmeds?
@vladthepaler: I wonder that myself.
This reminds me of after my Grandmother died, about 2 or 3 weeks after the funeral we were receiving her mail at my Mother’s address. My Grandmother had a hard time saying no to people, so she had a ton of magazine subscriptions and got a lot of junk mail.
The creepiest piece of mail we received was from a magazine whose subscription had run out and it said in big, bold letters “Betty, We Want To Bring You Back To LIFE!”.
Come on, get over it already people. Don’t blame a company when they have no idea your pet has died. It is only understandable they continue to send emails regarding the said pet if they are under the impression it is still alive.
Sometimes websites have glitches, talking to a person on the phone may very well alleviate the issue. Their demeanor is important, if they apologize with sincerity it should be good enough.
If a person cries from seeing their deceased pet’s name in an email, that is another matter. Perhaps your mother needs some sort of help in that regard. Get a new pet to fill in the emotional hole.
This isn’t really a big problem or the major fault of the company, it should not be treated as such. The headlines on this site are starting to seem more like that of a newspaper these days.