Virgin gaffe sparks spam deluge

Virgin gaffe sparks spam delugeVirgin Media has been forced into issuing another grovelling apology for a technology related cock-up after hundreds of customers were bombarded with spam emails.
The issue emerged after the company emailed customers which use its virgin.net service, provided by Google, to warn them that from the end of April, broadband customers will not be able to log into Google websites, such as YouTube, using their virgin.net addresses.
But anyone who hit “reply all” to the marketing email was able to reply to everyone else on the mailing list.
Virgin claimed only a “small proportion” of customers received the email, despite the fact that it has 135,000 virgin.net email customers. Many complained about being “bombarded” with emails from other customers, with some exploiting the gaffe to promote businesses or raise money for charity. One user complained about having to delete 700 unwanted messages.
“A small proportion of our customers have received an email from one of our suppliers which, if they reply-all, it is sent to a wider group. The issue was quickly fixed and we apologise for the inconvenience caused,” Virgin said in a statement.
The mistake was not due to a CC reply-all, however, but was likely to have been caused by Virgin using the wrong settings when putting together the mailing list, experts have claimed.
Last year, Virgin was forced to apologise after sending a broadband bill to a deceased man – including a £10 fine for late payment.  The bill then went viral on Facebook after the man’s son in law posted a photo of it; it was eventually shared by nearly 100,00 people. At the time, Virgin said: “We offer our sincerest apologies for the wording that appeared on the bill. Automated responses from banks should not appear on customer bills and we’re investigating how this happened.”

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1 Comment on "Virgin gaffe sparks spam deluge"

  1. Poor old Virgin Media cocks it up again http://t.co/BH1Cui7jbh #directmarketing #digitalmarketing #socialmedia

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