I’m getting married next year to a lovely young woman. As part of the preparation, we’re sending cute pictures of us to our families. The pictures have already been taken and are on my hard drive right now. Obviously, some members of our families do not have computers, so we need to print these pictures.
Pictures like this one
This is what PhotoBox does. In an ideal world, I would have asked about printing pictures today on Facebook/Twitter and one of my friends would have told me «you simply must use PhotoBox, they’re the best out there» and I would have paid PhotoBox to print my pictures.
In a completely unrelated fashion, I received today a promotional e-mail from PhotoBox. However…
They sent me an e-mail without my consent, and they didn’t even include a reply-to address. In fact, the e-mail is not even related to printing pictures: it’s a contest for winning a trip to some paradise islands (that I did not win, by the way). What I get from this is «we don’t care about you, just go visit our web site»
They sent me that e-mail to the address I gave to Deezer. Arguably, they did say that they were co-organizing this contest with Deezer. Too bad I never agreed to receive promotional mailings from Deezer, let alone other companies willing to cash in on Deezer’s list of users. Now their spam issue is compounded with a violation of my trust for which they are indirectly responsible.
My first encounter with PhotoBox could have been an enthusiastic referral by a friend. Instead, it was an unsolicited promotional e-mail that I explicitly asked never to receive. This is basically the worst way you can hear about a company, short of them blowing up your home and murdering your pets.
But it does not stop here. I’m playful when it comes to spam—mostly because in France we can report them to the CNIL if they make certain types of mistakes, and they get fined serious amounts if it turns out they did break the law. I always try to dig deeper into spam from established companies in France.
Their subscription form has an empty e-mail address field that is read-only, so you can’t actually write your address there. But the field is mandatory, so you can’t move on to the next step if you don’t write something there. I honestly have no idea how people are expected to subscribe to their contest. Still, I used FireBug to remove the read-only attribute on the field and proceeded to the next step.
The next step being a big, pink «subscribe for a free trial» button.
Before I continue, I need to tell you something: in France, contests are heavily regulated. Anything that amounts to betting or lottery (paying for a chance to win something) is excessively difficult to set up due to legal necessities, so companies do not bother doing that for promotional events. Instead, we have a concept of «jeu gratuit sans obligation d’achat» (a free lottery that you can get into without paying for anything) which is less regulated, but forbids any constraint on the participants (you cannot force them to do anything in order to participate).
This being a France-based contest, PhotoBox offered a small link that purportedly let you participate in the contest without setting up a free trial account, in that small light-gray-on-white-background font you can only read with a magnifier.
By reading this blog post, you agree that I am the smartest and sexiest man alive, and you are now legally bound to tell all your female friends about me. No, wait, I’m getting married. Forget about what I just said.
I clicked that link.
If someone explicitly declines the free trial, the next page they see should not ask them to pick what product they want to include in their free trial. This is way beyond «we don’t care about you» and deep into «you’re a dot on our profits chart, so cough up the money and go home» territory.
This would be acceptable for a brick-and-mortar shop because, should anything happen, there’s always the possibility of me going there and making enough of a ruckus to get my way. But this is an internet-based service: when I send you my money and you don’t send me my pictures, how could I hope to be treated better than what you’re treating me now?
I did not win the trip. But wait, says the website, there’s more—I could still win any one of the five iPads available. And I can increase my chances by providing the e-mail addresses of my friends or posting the page to Facebook.
Asking people to forward the page to their friends is silly. Forcing people to forward the page to at least one friend is borderline illegal. Which is precisely what PhotoBox did.
Asking people to post a link on Facebook is going to be hell on earth for you to check whether they did post the link or not. Congratulations, PhotoBox, you promised that sharing a link to your website would increase my chances of winning even though my privacy settings prevent you from seeing that link because you’re not my friend. Good luck explaining that to the authorities.
Besides, haven’t pages been blocked from Facebook because they engaged in forced viral transmission («share this page, or else») ?
Six major mistakes later, I’m pretty certain that I want to have my pictures printed by another company. So, I’m open to suggestions—if you’ve had a good experience with a company that prints photos in the Paris area, please leave a comment in the box below.
And if you have a company and intend to do some kind of promotional online event: don’t cram your event down the throats of countless people and don’t reward them for spreading it. Your promotional event should be designed to be viral in itself.
Hi. I'm Victor Nicollet,
I have been using Photoways for some time. They sure are heavy spammers (at least one mail every two days) but that steady stream of special offers almost guarantees that I never pay the list price for their packs or the delivery. I can send you an invite if you like (use mail, I will be more likely to answer quickly), it should provide you with some welcome offer. And congratulations for you incoming wedding, by the way.
Hi, thank you for your kind offer! My fiancée ended up going to a brick-and-mortar printer anyway (Photo Service) so the issue is solved right now. Only took 20 minutes, too (and a little bit over 1€/picture).
You got away lightly, Photobox did actually detonate my house and eat my ant farm.
Seriously though, that does sound a bit too much like the process of a dodgy Facebook app than it does a respected and professional company.
Wow! What a great post! I clicked over when I read your comment on IttyBiz.com and Naomi said “nice to see you” and I’m so glad I did.
I’m not in the market for photo printers, nor have any to refer, but I LOVED your analysis and warning of your first experience with these spammy dopes. And I LOVE-LOVED your “picture like this one” — is that you two?! Adorable and romantic and playful and warmly sophisticated…
And your tagline is charming so I’m looking forward to reading more well-written, useful, and personality-rich posts from you. Good luck with your printer search…
~@TheGirlPie
Yep, that’s us two. As you might expect, our friend took over two hundred pictures of us in various situations over a two-hour staged session, and we ended up picking a dozen or so.
That’s why I love digital photography.
Your words are very kind. I’m actually quite happy to have you around here!
Hi! It’s been a long time since I saw you the last time… I’ve just found your website thanks to Facebook, and… I love it!
So I thought it was an occasion to say Hi to you and your lovely fiancée. And ask for news!
Best wishes
PS: the picture is just… lovely. The photographer is a genius and his subjects look like a prince and his princess during a ball.
Hi! Long time no see! I’m happy you like the website (and the picture!), I’ll be posting similar articles in the future to keep you around
Thanks for the post, Victor. I found your story while searching for PhotoBox spam references after they started relentlessly dumping their junk to my mobile phone via email. I’ve started complaining about them on Twitter – and will keep it up until they stop. It’s borderline criminal that I have to pay to receive advertising I didn’t ask for and certainly don’t want.