iHOUSE Is Sleazy

I know – if you don’t have anything good to say about someone, don’t say anything, right?  But, I’ve held this in a LONG time: iHOUSE is just a sleazy company.

They have been using extremely shady email techniques to deliver their email marketing.  I’ve watched this for the last couple of years.  Here’s a recent message we received (because a very long time ago, we signed up for a test account with them just to see it):

If you check the FROM address, it seems to be a domain name that was formerly a customer of theirs, not their own domain name.  So, if that one gets blocked for SPAM, then they just use another one.  I would NEVER use their email marketing service – probably the same techniques.  Not legit practices like iContact or MailChimp.

I didn’t really care until now because there’s not much that can be done – there isn’t one true Internet Cop for SPAM.  But they’ve now resorted to another technique that I think is pretty slimy too: using the guise of being charitable to win business.

If a company or individual wants to help a person or a group, they should do so without consideration of whether anyone will notice.  They should do it because they want to help, not to shamelessly pull at someone’s heart strings.  I feel basically the same about the in-show barely-masked commercialization I saw in Extreme Home Makeover this weekend.

So, I’m calling it like I see it.  Sleazy.  So there.