No Dice <Nerd Rage>

[Chrono22]

I received an email advertising DnD encounters. I never gave WotC my email address, nor did I subscribe to any material of theirs through which they could acquire it. Actually, I'm in a meetup group whose leadership was asked to spread the email to its membership.
Here's the email:

We hope by now you've heard of D&D's brand new weekly play experience - D&D Encounters. More importantly, we hope you've had a chance to play it!
Season two, set in Dark Sun, started only a few weeks ago and already players are reporting back on the amazing challenges they've faced journeying across the blasted lands of Athas. Players are also loving that they're getting a preview of the Dark Sun campaign setting - almost 2 months early. If you haven't started playing D&D Encounters yet, you can still jump in! Check out the recap of what's happened over the last few weeks by following this link. And click here to find a participating gaming store in your area.
Wizards of the Coast uses all your favorite social network tools, so the D&D Encounters play experience goes way beyond the store. Join the D&D dialogue on Twitter and Facebook to discover some special in-game benefits or buffs that affect your current play session. You can jump into the nationwide D&D discussion in the D&D Community Group too, where you can share your stories, post your photos and talk about your gaming experience.
See you at D&D Encounters!

Normally I'd be fine getting junk email, and i'd casually delete it, but for some reason this really irritates me. I didn't ask to receive such spam, and I don't appreciate it. So, the email included a link to respond. I figured I'd voice my complaint to the source, to tell them how I don't like them shaking down shop owners to spread the info. I tried repeatedly to email to said link, but it doesn't work. My mounting frustration over WotC's technical failings opened fresh wounds, so a short rant is forthcoming:
When you sell something I want, I'll buy it. You aren't going to convince me to buy something I don't want with junk emails and poor marketing. Actually, let me revise the first claim- I'd buy something you were selling if I wanted it IF you weren't on my black list.
No PDFs = none of my money.
Restrictive Third Party licenses = none of my money.
The well is poisoned, you aren't getting a dime of mine until these policies are revised or abandoned.

(This thread isn't about the merits or failures of 4th edition, please don't engage in such discussions in it.)

 

[Crothian]

Does anyone ever ask to recieve spam? Shake down shop owners? Did a group of WotC people in Fedoras come by the gameing store with baseball bats and accidently knock over some books to make their point?

It sounds like it is the meetup group that gave over your e-mail address. It is them you should be mad at.

 

[crazy_cat]

Does anyone ever ask to recieve spam? Shake down shop owners? Did a group of WotC people in Fedoras come by the gameing store with baseball bats and accidently knock over some books to make their point?

It sounds like it is the meetup group that gave over your e-mail address. It is them you should be mad at.

Or maybe you could just ignore it and move on. We all get spam all the time and life is just much too short to waste any time worrying about it.

 

[Chrono22]

Does anyone ever ask to recieve spam? Shake down shop owners? Did a group of WotC people in Fedoras come by the gameing store with baseball bats and accidently knock over some books to make their point?

Please, don't be dramatic. I'm talking about members of the meetup group being shop owners that run games out of their stores, and how they are asked/"heavily incentivised" by WotC to spread their advertisements via social networking.

It sounds like it is the meetup group that gave over your e-mail address. It is them you should be mad at.

I don't think so. If I owned a store, and was basically required to spread promotional information by a producer else lose the privilege of selling the product, my hands would be tied.
What's made me mad is WotC's overly aggressive advertisements and policies. Or should I say, hostile policies? Cause they seem to be hostile to promoting any kind of gaming community, whatever the ads themselves might say.

Or maybe you could just ignore it and move on. We all get spam all the time and life is just much too short to waste any time worrying about it.

Kind of like how posting on an internet forum is a waste of time?

 

[OSEZNO]

That's part of being Wizards/DDI sanctioned. If the store owners don't like it or agree with it, they don't have to be sanctioned.

Also, my store has a sign-up mailer. When I signed up to it, I expected spam in my inbox, and I expected some of it would be useless to me.

 

[On Puget Sound]

There are so many ways your interest in gaming can get tied to your email address, and your email address find its way to WotC, that fixing blame on any particular entity is pointless. After all, my abiding interest in British lotteries I haven't entered and Nigerian oil money in abandoned accounts is apparently well known. Though how my need for male body part enlargement became public I'm not sure; I haven't discussed that in any emails. Must be my ex-girlfriend's fault.

 

[Chrono22]

So, are you saying the blame lies solely at the feet of people that follow and abide by policy, as opposed to blaming the people that create it?
The source of the problem isn't shop owners, it's the policy-makers. Where's the solution? Giving the policy-maker an incentive to make the policy into something you want. One such incentive is withholding your money.
I don't think boycotting the material or product of a company is pointless. It seems to be a pretty effective form of quality control, historically.

 

[crazy_cat]

So, are you saying the blame lies solely at the feet of people that follow and abide by policy, as opposed to blaming the people that create it?

I'm not sure anybody is saying this. WOTC could possibly have got your e-mail address from a number of places - worrying about how they did and where from seems like a bit of a waste of time IMHO.

Your one man boycott wont even be noticed by WOTC - but good luck with it. I would suggest e-mailing them and letting them know how you feel, but they'd probably just say thank you for your comments and then add your e-mail address to their mailing list then and send you yet more unsolicited marketing materials.

 

[Chainsaw]

It's fun, I mean healthy, to get mad once in a while, especially when it's in a relatively harmless way - like e-mailing a blackhole. Much better than bottling it in, man. Get it out I say!

 

[Asmor]

So...

It took me a couple reads, but if I understand correctly, your gripe is that someone who runs a meetup group voluntarily passed along some marketing for a (presumably) relevant program and you're annoyed by that because you disagree with some choices the company made?

Even my own summary of that makes little sense. It would be like a teammate on a sports team suggesting a new flavor of Gatorade, and then you get mad at Gatorade because they don't bottle the drink in a way you find acceptable.

You're taking two completely disparate things and trying to force a very tenuous link between them...