A programmer's tale

Levyo Coop. pollutes forums with hidden marketing campaign

January 18th, 2007

Almost a week ago I came by this topic on the ez.no forum. At first sight it looks like a question, but actually it isn’t.

The results of a search on the term “levyo” with your favorite search engine won’t lie: apparently a lot of forums and blogs were polluted with similar topics.

This kind of marketing activities makes me really pissed off. I contacted Levyo Coop, the company behind the Levyo gallery product, by e-mail. You will find some abstracts of our conversation below.

Hello there

I’m a moderator on the ez.no forums, and I am very unhappy to see that your company or a marketeer related to your company is spamming the ez.no forum (http://ez.no/community/forum/general/levyo_ajax_gallery_image_forum , forum guidelines at http://ez.no/community/forum/guidelines ) and a lot of other forums with unsolicited ads, masked by a text that at first sight looks like a question.

If you are responsible for this, then I wish your company goes bankrupt. Do you really think your product sales will be better by doing this kind of promotion activities? It will only give your company a really bad reputation.

Sincerely

Kristof Coomans

13/01/2007 9:52

Dear Kristof Coomans,

I am very unhappy to hear from you but we insist that we do not have any
policy to spam any public forum. We have forwarded your mail to Sales Dept.
They will reply you as soon as possible. We appologize for the inconvenience
raising.

Thank you for all your cooperation

M.Carthy – Levyo Coop

16/01/2007 12:49

You promised me you would mail me back about all the dirty Levyo spam on several forums and blogs, but you didn’t. If you are not responsible for the spam, then put it as a news item on your website. Otherwise I won’t believe you at all.

An answer please?

K.

16/01/2007 13:51

Dear Sir or Madamm,

We have reviewed your complaint and also searched on your forum but not
found spammed topics as your mention. We have found just only one topic
mentioned about Levyo Gallery on your forum. If you find any another topics
on your forum please let us know. But we confirm assurely that we do not
have any plan or policy to spam any forum. We want to become a friendly and
trustly provider. No provider want to become spammer or unfriendly one. Ajax
is a great and advanced technology and Levyo Gallery has many great features
built on this technology so we strongly believe that our potential customer
will know the reason why they should choose this product. About your request
to “put it as a news item on our website” is not acceptable because your
request is illegal. If some competitors spam (of/about your products) or
have an arm to harm your company’s image and also say that you must put
the/any item on your site, how can you do? You obey and carry out the
suggestion??? But now I would like to let you know that we have found you
are doing spam our mail by sending to almost of our mail and also send many
to our emails. Please stop spamming our mail or your mail be blocked by our
spamming mail protector or get abusement. For further information please
just reply this email. We express many thanks for all your cooperation.

G.Marks – Sales Dept

16/01/2007 15:02

You’ve posted to many forums and blogs (searching Google for Levyo gives you plenty of them), not only to the ez.no forum (which isn’t mine, I’m just a moderator on a voluntary base, I’m not an employee of eZ systems and I do not speak in their name).

Your add
a) is off-topic in several forums and blogs
b) is written as if it was a question, misleading many of the forum visitors who invest their precious time in answering
c) is not allowed on most forums it was posted too (there is something called “forum guidelines”, which you don’t respect at all)

How can my *request* to add a news item, stating that you are not involved in any way with those forum posts, be illegal? I only request you to do this, in case you are not involved. And I have the right to _NOT_ believe you if you don’t put such a news item on the site.

About me spamming your company, as you suggested I was doing: I’ve send those e-mails with the same goal you had: to reach as many involved people as possible. But you did it in an illegal way: trying to reach as much customers as possible by posting unsolicited ads in forums, not obeying the forum guidelines/rules. Furthermore, I did not send out any doubles, to the same address, if I define spam/unsolicited adds the same as you according to your own comments in your mail below. So you can not blame me for spamming you if you say you aren’t spamming forums because you only post once to each forum.

You may wish yourself lucky. If Blue Frog still existed and it took into account your actions, you would get far more e-mail than I’m sending your company right now.

By the answers (or the lack of) I received so far from your company, I suspect that you ARE involved with the doubtful marketing practices I accuse you of. But feel free to try to convince me of being not involved.

Kristof

16/01/2007 15:39

We do not convince you anything and do not reply any your email for this
case anymore. I believe have answer for your question. Thank you
G.Marks

18/01/2007 15:38 

OK, I’ll give you an extra advertisement for free on my blog: http://blog.coomanskristof.be/2007/01/18/levyo-coop-pollutes-forums-with-hidden-marketing-campaign/
Happy new year!

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