What terrible awful horrendous things they did:
Item 1
My interest in this company involved an email, the Alienware Newsletter that I didn't think I had subscribed to. I'm hard-pressed to understand why I would have subscribed to their newsletter.
The email had an invalid return address, but it did include an unsubscribe link. However, the unsubscribe link does not make any attempt to verify that the address entered is valid. In fact, after you enter your email address in the form, it then indicates you need to enter your email address, but doesn't provide a place to do so. It looks like the only way to get to a legitimate unsubscribe form is to enter a patently invalid email address.
However, I found nothing to confirm a suspicion of spamming on google groups.
Item 2
Go to the web site, watch your computer slow to a crawl... and subsequently bringing up a pop-up. Okay, these folks aren't alone. There are a lot of clueless merchants on the web.
This is tantamount to going into a retail store and being accosted by a high-pressure salesperson. It's great to have the help available when you ask for it, but once you've already got me in the store, only idiots think the way to make the sale is to do something intentionally annoying.
Item 3
This is great! Their phone numbers are readily available on the site. I call the number after normal business hours and select technical support. They play a message saying that I would get faster response by chatting through their web-based support.
I wait. I wait some more. I put the phone on speaker so I can put it down while I wait. It's over an hour later before somebody answered. I presume they have a "drop" rate of over 95% with a wait like that.
If they want to staff this operation so that there's an hour wait, they should at least reported the expected hold time when you call. At least it was on their nickel.
The Alienware newsletter is sent to those who sign up for it through the various hardware/software contests that Alienware sponsors, or through the “subscribe” box available on our site. The unsubscribe form may likely forwarded it to another email address for manual removal.
Item 2
The current layout of the site still does use flash, but I’m not aware of any popups.
Item 3
The delay was likely due to the time in which you were calling. Chat support would be a faster solution, also emailing a help address such as "info@alienware.com"
Chris Warner - 03 Aug 2004
Item 1
I don't think I signed up for the newsletter, but there's nothing that indicates that AlienWare is systematically spamming. It's plausible that a friend of mine entering one of your sweepstakes signed me up. There's sometimes a tendency for marketers to set the entry forms up to default to signing up for a newsletter, though. If that's what's going on, that's just a bad idea. The ill will that's created counteracts any small increase in sales.
As for the unsubscribe form, this is just not a very professional use of technology. Whether these unsubscribe requests are being handled manually or not, there's no room for error. There's no feedback if there's a typo in the address, etc. So it's not real professional. It's a pretty small point, but I don't think it's very defensible.
Item 2
Good news! The home page doesn't seem to be pegging my computer's CPU any more.... I've taken it off my "restricted sites" list.
Item 3
I just tried calling tech support, somebody answered in less than 30 seconds. So from this small sample size, it appears this problem is resolved.
The bottom line is it would seem that AlienWare has in fact addressed these problems. There's a lot less reason for me to be bugged by them. :-)
EliMantel - 04 Aug 2004
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