This is what dead feels like.
I know now that I must be legally dead. Hadn’t realised before, but when I checked email this morning I learned that it must indeed be true.
Back in 1996, I signed up with iName.com for email forwarding to the address “thelotofus@earthling.net”. The main reason – no, the only reason for doing this was the promise of a "free for life" email address with free forwarding.
Pretty straightforward promise there: Free. For Life.
Well as they’re now telling me that the service is no longer going to be free, I can only assume that I am, in fact, dead. Thanks for clearing that up...
I’m deflecting my initial rabid furious response to this as best I can by trying to laugh about it. This is my way of dealing with the entirely natural and righteous urge to slam these sleazy, scum-sucking, fucknozzle, money-grabbing, toe rag, brain-dead, clueless, motherfucking, bastard, arsehole, douchebag, tosspot wankers for the praetorian, racketeering, underhanded, lawyer-infested slimebuckets they are.
Signing up with iName seemed like a reasonably smart idea at the time – allowing my wife and I to choose a general-purpose family email alias that, in theory (and according to their promise) we’d never have to change, no matter how often we switched ISPs. Of course, I’m not that naïve – I’ve read Hansen and Heinlein. I know what TANSTAAFL means. “Free” accounts are worth at most what you pay for them and can often be worth considerably less – that much is clear.
So, while it’s an unexpected pain in the butt to have to try and reach all of the many hundreds of people to whom we’ve given out this email address over the years – it’s a switch I guess I’ve known I would some day have to pull.
That’s not what really twists my melon. It’s the approach those iName/mail.com filth took in telling me this.
Here’s what blackmail looks like in the Internet era:
From: MAIL.COM Forwarding
To: thelotofus@earthling.net
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:21 AM
Subject: Preserve your forwarding e-mail account!!!
Dear thelotofus,
This is your second and FINAL notice regarding e-mail forwarding at thelotofus@earthling.net. You need to act now to continue to receive e-mail at this address.
Well, actually, no. This is the very first I’ve heard of this. Oh – and maybe somebody there should take a customer service course or something. You’re about to tell me something that’s guaranteed to be really unpopular – try not to sound like a debt collector, moron.
From this inauspicious opening, the comedy only gets richer. Without skipping a beat from the “Dear Sir: shit on you” opening, they segue directly into this:
Special Promotion
Signup for Columbia House and get one year of forwarding FREE!
For a limited time, Mail.com is running a promotion which will allow you to receive an annual subscription to E-Mail Forwarding services - FREE!! Click here to Apply for this great offer!!!
Hmmmm. How does “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Oh, and er...FUCK YOU” grab you? Breaking your promise and screwing your customers in the ear – that’s a “great offer!!!”? What spazbastard school of marketing taught you this you cretinous pigfuckers? Have you any idea how insanely angry this makes me? And for the record: Columbia House sucks ass. And I have proof.
How did we get from “Free for life”, through iName getting rolled into Mail.com and telling me (by email, 1999): “This name change will not affect your current email service in any way” all the way to “join Columbia House now or we’ll kill your forwarding service”?
The rest of the message is more Columbia Arse spam and then a “FAQ” that doesn’t include any of the questions I bet their customers are frequently asking right about now (like – “Why are you such crudsuckers?” or “Where do you get off?”).
Perhaps my favourite moment, though, is the final delicious irony of the “privacy” statement at the very bottom. This is priceless:
“You are receiving this Service Announcement to notify you of important changes to your Mail.com-powered e-mail account. You cannot unsubscribe from Service Announcements, as they are necessary for keeping you informed about changes to your account. Service Announcements will never include a sponsor...”
Bastard assmunch idiots.
So – in case anyone reading this uses our “thelotofus” email address, please note that we will no longer be using that address as from today. The main sympatico account (michaelocc AT sympatico DOT ca) will work – please update your address books. This one we pay for and will gladly continue to pay for unless they ever hire anyone from the management team at iName, Mail.com or their parent company Net2Phone.
*nuff*
I know now that I must be legally dead. Hadn’t realised before, but when I checked email this morning I learned that it must indeed be true.
Back in 1996, I signed up with iName.com for email forwarding to the address “thelotofus@earthling.net”. The main reason – no, the only reason for doing this was the promise of a "free for life" email address with free forwarding.
Pretty straightforward promise there: Free. For Life.
Well as they’re now telling me that the service is no longer going to be free, I can only assume that I am, in fact, dead. Thanks for clearing that up...
I’m deflecting my initial rabid furious response to this as best I can by trying to laugh about it. This is my way of dealing with the entirely natural and righteous urge to slam these sleazy, scum-sucking, fucknozzle, money-grabbing, toe rag, brain-dead, clueless, motherfucking, bastard, arsehole, douchebag, tosspot wankers for the praetorian, racketeering, underhanded, lawyer-infested slimebuckets they are.
Signing up with iName seemed like a reasonably smart idea at the time – allowing my wife and I to choose a general-purpose family email alias that, in theory (and according to their promise) we’d never have to change, no matter how often we switched ISPs. Of course, I’m not that naïve – I’ve read Hansen and Heinlein. I know what TANSTAAFL means. “Free” accounts are worth at most what you pay for them and can often be worth considerably less – that much is clear.
So, while it’s an unexpected pain in the butt to have to try and reach all of the many hundreds of people to whom we’ve given out this email address over the years – it’s a switch I guess I’ve known I would some day have to pull.
That’s not what really twists my melon. It’s the approach those iName/mail.com filth took in telling me this.
Here’s what blackmail looks like in the Internet era:
From: MAIL.COM Forwarding
To: thelotofus@earthling.net
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:21 AM
Subject: Preserve your forwarding e-mail account!!!
Dear thelotofus,
This is your second and FINAL notice regarding e-mail forwarding at thelotofus@earthling.net. You need to act now to continue to receive e-mail at this address.
Well, actually, no. This is the very first I’ve heard of this. Oh – and maybe somebody there should take a customer service course or something. You’re about to tell me something that’s guaranteed to be really unpopular – try not to sound like a debt collector, moron.
From this inauspicious opening, the comedy only gets richer. Without skipping a beat from the “Dear Sir: shit on you” opening, they segue directly into this:
Special Promotion
Signup for Columbia House and get one year of forwarding FREE!
For a limited time, Mail.com is running a promotion which will allow you to receive an annual subscription to E-Mail Forwarding services - FREE!! Click here to Apply for this great offer!!!
Hmmmm. How does “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Oh, and er...FUCK YOU” grab you? Breaking your promise and screwing your customers in the ear – that’s a “great offer!!!”? What spazbastard school of marketing taught you this you cretinous pigfuckers? Have you any idea how insanely angry this makes me? And for the record: Columbia House sucks ass. And I have proof.
How did we get from “Free for life”, through iName getting rolled into Mail.com and telling me (by email, 1999): “This name change will not affect your current email service in any way” all the way to “join Columbia House now or we’ll kill your forwarding service”?
The rest of the message is more Columbia Arse spam and then a “FAQ” that doesn’t include any of the questions I bet their customers are frequently asking right about now (like – “Why are you such crudsuckers?” or “Where do you get off?”).
Perhaps my favourite moment, though, is the final delicious irony of the “privacy” statement at the very bottom. This is priceless:
“You are receiving this Service Announcement to notify you of important changes to your Mail.com-powered e-mail account. You cannot unsubscribe from Service Announcements, as they are necessary for keeping you informed about changes to your account. Service Announcements will never include a sponsor...”
Bastard assmunch idiots.
So – in case anyone reading this uses our “thelotofus” email address, please note that we will no longer be using that address as from today. The main sympatico account (michaelocc AT sympatico DOT ca) will work – please update your address books. This one we pay for and will gladly continue to pay for unless they ever hire anyone from the management team at iName, Mail.com or their parent company Net2Phone.
*nuff*
