Lee.org

Update 12-9-05. See comment #5, below

I had an exchange with SierraTradingPost.com recently about comment spam they appeared to be writing.

Here is the last letter I wrote to Andy Newlin, Online Marketing Manager at SierraTradingPost.com

To paraphrase our conversation:

I said: Your company is posting comment spam, which I don’t think is very endearing.
You said: No, we’re not.
I said: Yes you are, and here are 20 examples of it
You said: No, we’re not. That’s not us. Well, actually, you’re right. An adverstizing affiliate of ours is writing potentially deceptive ads in our name. So please apologize for saying that we’re writing comment spam.

You do what you think is best for your company. Have a nice day,

Lee Sonko

Below are quotes from our previous message exchange.

My first email to you:
——– Original Message ————-
I spoke with a customer rep on the phone recently about this…

I’ve recently seen several ads for SierraTradingPost.com on websites that look an awful lot like comment spam.

Some examples of this is here: http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-80105 and http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-124408

It reads: Joe – Check out www.SierraTradingPost.com, you can save 30 – 70%! :-)

I believe I saw that same message on a few other web sites as well but I could be mistaken. Maybe it’s just in several places on bikeforums.net.

I wanted to say that I would never buy anything from a company that uses comment spam as an advertising tactic. I might suggest that you more clearly label your ads in bikeforums.net and other places so that one does not mistake them for comment spam.

There are many other, more savory tacts you can use to advertise to the internet world.

You can find out more about comment spam here: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&q=%22what%20is%20comment%20spam%22

Thank you,
Lee Sonko
——– End of Original Message ——

Your first response to me:
——– Original Message ————-
Thanks for writing, and for your interest in helping Sierra Trading Post. This was not one of our ads that you saw, but rather people talking about us in a forum on the web. There are thousands of forums/blogs/personal websites on the web that we have no control over and can do nothing about. We employ only mainstream, accepted, advertising tactics, including paid search placement, shopping portals, and affiliate websites. Our affiliate program is parasite-free (http://www.sierratradingpostaffiliates.com/parasite-free.htm) and monitored continuously for non-compliance. Please let us know if you have any further concerns, and thanks again for your thoughts.
——– End of Original Message ——

My response
——– Original Message ————-
>This was not one of our ads that you saw, but rather people talking about us in a forum on the web.

Well Joe is rather prolific.

He has the 4th post in all of the following message threads:

http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-80115.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-74863.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-80288.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-80418.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-79602.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-80148.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-78444.html
http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-70933.html

And a few hundred more.

I’m thinking that makes you a liar.
——– End of Original Message ——

And yours
——– Original Message ————-
Thanks for letting me know about this (I’ll excuse the liar comment, but I would hope that you would apologize. I in no way lied to you) – I researched it more and it looks like this “Joe” character is the webmaster of bikeforums.net, so the owner of this website is doing it on his own. It looks like he has an affiliate account with us, I’ll contact him to let him know about your concern, and if he wishes to advertise for us, to please make it look more like an ad and not a forum post. Ultimately, however, I have no control over his website, and he can post whatever he wants to, just as you could put up your own website and say whatever you want to. I’m very willing to work with you on this if you can do so in an acceptable manner.

Best,
Andy
——– End of Original Message ——