of sex shops and privacy

Of all the retail stores on the internet, stores that sell adult toys and lingerie should be sitting near the top of the list when it comes to protecting customer privacy. Unfortunately, I recently discovered just the opposite to be true. There is such a store from which I have purchased a few gifts for my wife. I won't mention the store name, but let's just say that it is named after two biblical characters - two very early biblical characters. ;)

I've made a few purchases over the years, and haven't really had any trouble with their service. Their shipping is sometimes slow, but they deliver items discreetly and their prices are competitive. We've had a couple of items that were mis-described in their store, but nothing earth-shattering (vinyl versus real leather!). Honestly, I only make purchases with them about once or twice a year, so I don't have too many experiences.

Like any other retail site, I provided a dedicated email address when I registered. I like to do this so that I can better track my email, and if I start seeing spam, I know exactly where it is coming from. A couple of weeks ago, I started seeing spam arrive in this mailbox. It was all of the typical stuff - the badly HTML-formatted messages trying to sell me Rolex watches, Viagra or Phentermine. You get the picture; certainly not store-related sale announcements (although I guess you could argue the relativity of Viagra to sex shops). None-the-less, I immediately contacted their customer service department, and after a day or so received a reply. It was a canned response apologizing for the inconvenience, with a promise to have my name removed from their future marketing lists. Gee, thanks but no thanks! Once you've sold my email address, you can't just take it back.

So, I deleted that dedicated email address and I won't order from them again. I hope it was worth whatever money they made selling their customers down river. Lame!