An interesting email from [email protected] just arrived in my Inbox.  It was addressed to my Amazon.com email address and was attempting to pitch their new e-store.

Toys R Us used to be an Amazon partner, but after winning a suit against Amazon, they started their own e-commerce site as of July 1st.  I have never done business with Toys R Us directly.  Instead, I used Amazon to buy some items from them in 2002 (!) as Christmas presents for my nieces. 

So you might understand why I am a bit miffed to find crap from Toys R Us in my Inbox.  Especially an email chock-full of bug-laden images and tracking links.  Further, I had set my email preferences on Amazon’s site to allow only transactional emails.  I am not supposed to get ANY promotional crap.

I see from the Toys R Us website that they’re migrating accounts from Amazon.  I find this obnoxious and more than just a little presumptuous on their part.  My business “relationship” was with Amazon, not Toys R Us.  Simply making a purchase through Amazon gives Toys R Us no rights to my account, or to violate the terms of Amazon’s privacy policy.

Worse still is the way the email (or at least the parts I could read, as I refuse to load the images that let them track the email) is worded:

You have been subscribed as ****@***.*** if you do not want to receive any more advertising or promotional emails from us (including emails on special savings and news), just click here.

It makes it sound as if I had somehow subscribed to their crap and puts the onus on me to unsubscribe.  Since I did not opt-in to this crap, it seems they should be the ones to remove me. 

I’ve submitted customer service requests to both Amazon and Toys R Us (which they both make difficult to do).  Not that I’m expecting anything much to happen.  But at least they will know I’m not happy about their assumption that they can “migrate” my account and start ignoring my preferences.

Really, this is what peeves me about marketing drones.  They seize on any excuse they can to spam you with crap you don’t want and that you haven’t asked for.  This is why I take a hard-line approach to my Inbox.  It makes it somewhat simple, though.  There’s one simple heuristic:  Did I ask for this to be sent?  If the answer is no then it’s spam.  Period.  End of freakin’ discussion.