Bart Schaefer <schaefer(_at_)brasslantern(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Nov 28, 6:30pm, Seth wrote:
} I don't want anything shoved under my door to trip me, period. I have
} no problem with them leaving piles of menus in the mail room where I
} can look at them and take one if _I_ feel like it, and they don't get
} in my way when I don't. That's a lot like putting ads on their own web
} site, isn't it?
Actually, no, it's not. Their web site isn't located where you might
happen to wander past twice a day. Ads on their web site are more like
a pile of menus outside their *own* front door.
Fine, then let them pay Google to put the ads on news.google.com, or
any other web site they choose (that they think I go to often
enough). I don't object to that, either.
Besides, piling menus in the mail room hardly differs from shoving them
under your door.
Yes, it does.
If every restaurant in the city left a pile of menus
in your mail room, you'd trip over them just as surely.
No, the person in charge of the mail room would limit the number
allowed just like the owner of a web site probably limits the number
of ads.
But you know that's not going to happen, because both you and the
restaurant know the relative value of a pile of menus in the mail
room.
Actually, it _does_ happen. My building's mailroom has several piles
of menus, free weekly publications, and similar stuff.
Email is sent because the sender thinks sending it has more value
than not sending it. Your mail room isn't buried in menus because
it's not worth the effort; there's a menu under your door because
someone felt (even if wrongly) that it was worth the effort.
I don't care about the sender's perceived value.
Either way, your preferences didn't enter into it,
The person who runs the mailroom _does_ take my preferences into
account (and those of my neighbors), since we could _fire_ him if we
didn't like the job he's doing.
and the shut-in upstairs who never visits the mail room might be
glad to learn about a new place to order out delivery.
So they're welcome to invite menus to be placed under their door, say
by a sign they put on their own door. I'm still willing to have
anyone who puts a menu under _my_ door arrested.
} But if Amazon already pays, Barry is happy receiving their mail
} because it's paid for. So I concluded that Barry's system would
} require _additional_ payment.
And that led you also to conclude that Amazon would be unwilling to
make that additional payment?
It doesn't matter: if Amazon is willing to make it, Barry remains
unhappy. If they aren't, I get unhappy.
To answer John L's question: Pays an ESP, or pays to license mailing
list management or CRM software, or most likely in Amazon's case
pays a small army of DBAs and programmers and marketers and HTML
designers and MTA administrators. That there's not currently any
direct cost for moving the bits into the recipient mailbox is not
evidence that they'd balk at one.
Therefore, adding such a cost will have no perceived effect (except to
their shareholders), so how does it solve any problem with Barry's
mailbox?
Seth
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