Shameless Spammers – BVD / Big Value Depot / Big Ticket Depot and other annoyances
In the heat of annoyance, I posted this rant on the signup page overnight.В When my head was clearer, I realized that I didn’t really want to rant directly on the signup page.В However, it’s still worth saying.В So, here’s my rant.В It started out because of the BVD spam incidents this week, which kept escalating, and then we were also flooded by an unusually large rash of other scams as well.В Hence, my rant.
BVD users – do NOT sign up – You are NOT welcome here.
We do not tolerate users who disrespect our rules, nor do we tolerate spammers. It says, right there on the page, not to do what you did, in large red letters. You should be seriously ashamed of yourselves. It’s our site, we pay the bills, therefore we make the rules, and if you’re not going to respect the rules that we have clearly, repeatedly, politely posted on our website, which most other people can comprehend just fine, then, Big Value Depot / Big Ticket Depot spammers, you can just bugger off. You spammed us worse than the overseas spammers who sign up every night by the dozens! I assume the overseas spammers can’t read the “NO SPAMMING” part of things, but you guys speak english, what’s your excuse?!
While I’m at it, I may as well mention the other people who should close this page and leave right now. If you are going to try and post ads for any of the following, DO NOT BOTHER SIGNING UP.
NO home typists or other data entry / work from home scams.
NO “get rich quick” scams where there is no product or service other than “get rich quick” which you can supposedly do by putting up ads telling people they can “get rich quick” by putting up their own ads trying to recruit other people who will put up still more ads so they also can “get rich quick” etc etc etc. If you don’t have a tangible physical product, or a service that is REALLY a service, and your only product is “magic get rich quick posting ads”, then don’t post it here.
NO escorts or erotic massages or anything of that sort. This is not the place. Seriously.
NO cash gifting scams, ponzi schemes, english bulldog scams, 419 scams, advance fee scams, etc. We’re on to you…
Loan Modification – while we understand that in a few cases, loan modification is legitimate and can work, there are thousands of loan mod scams out there and we’re not qualified to tell the difference, nor is it profitable for us to endlessly research each and every supposed loan mod company and find out if they’re real or a scam. So, we just don’t allow those ads, as we feel it’s more important to protect consumers. Ditto for loan offers, note buyers, insurance that isn’t insurance, ecigarettes, and other high-scam industries that we get way too many ads for.
NO spamming the other users or bothering them in any way, unless you are contacting them to purchase the item they have advertised. Contacting them with business offers, commercial concerns, scams, creepy messages, asking them for favors, etc, violates our terms of use.
This site is based in the USA, created for a USA audience, and is not equipped to deal with overseas currencies, etc. On rare occasions we make exceptions and allow someone overseas to post if we feel the ad has value to a United States audience, and we also don’t mind our Canadian neighbors posting, but we usually won’t allow even non-scams originating from overseas to be posted. Someday maybe we’ll make an international site. But right now, it’s just 50 States Classifieds. Sorry.
I hope my rant doesn’t scare off all the nice normal people out there who just want to buy and sell legitimate products and services. Please be assured that we are always vigilant in finding and banning spammers, scammers, and other annoyances so that the rest of you can buy and sell safely. As you’re probably aware if you’ve been online for more than 5 minutes, Internet spam often makes it impossible to find the legitimate products and services you’re looking for. It cheapens a site, and makes everything else on it seem untrustworthy, when you allow just anyone to post whatever they want to without trying to screen it in some way. We believe that the battle against spam must be fought vigilantly, daily, to keep any site worthwhile in the long run. We spend a lot of time and resources trying to do just that.
On the plus side, you won’t have to compete with the spammers to have your ads seen, since our extremely skeptical human editors must review each ad and decide whether or not to approve it, ensuring that spammers don’t get even one second of free advertising on our website. It still wastes our time to review and delete them, but at least it doesn’t deface our website and scare shoppers away. The bottom line is that we hate spam too, and you won’t have to put up with it here.
To the users who came here to post free ads for legitimate products and services, and who will treat our website and our users with respect, you are what makes our website a thriving marketplace and a great community. Thank You for using our site! Please proceed to sign up below, and have a great day!
January 29, 2010
Tags: Big Ticket Depot, Big Value Depot, BVD, Jerks, Scammers, Scams, Site Policies, Spam, spammers, Terms of Service, Terms of Use, TOS Posted in: 50 States Classifieds, Free Classifieds, Scams, What Not To Do
6 Responses
What did I do! All I want to do is place an ad about my husband needing a job. He is working in Kansas right now and they work 7 days a wk. so he can’t even come home. That’s all I needed, but if you consider it spam I’ll go somewhere else. If I did something wrong, I di it out of ignorance, since I am new at this computer stuff.
Melody Blake
Melody Blake – I don’t know if you, specifically, were one of the members of BVD / BTD that mercilessly spammed our site for over a week straight. However, due to their actions, if you are going to post anything regarding BVD / BTD or any of their affiliates, I am sorry to say that no, you will not be able to post here. Members of BVD signed up for over 100 different accounts on our website in a very short period of time, and then each one of those accounts proceeded to click the REPLY button in hundreds of ads. They pasted a form letter into each reply, spamming thousands of our users with an identical form letter begging them to sign up for their website. They did this despite the HUGE red letters on the page telling them NOT to do this, and that they were spamming us, and we were asking them politely to stop. I got hundreds of emails from users reporting that they were getting spam through the privacy mail system. I suspended the Big Value Depot users who were spamming the users, but they just kept signing up with new email addresses relentlessly hammering our servers with their messages. I don’t know if they were doing it all at the same time on purpose, or if the company policy is to spam. However, none of them put up any ads – they just spammed the privacy mail system over and over and over and over and over and over again. So, sorry to say, I don’t know if you were one of the spammers, or if you’re just an affiliate who had nothing to do with this attack on our mail servers, but either way, you will have to pay the price as a BVD user, since we will no longer allow any users to post any ads, or email users, regarding Big Value Depot, Big Ticket Depot, or any of their affiliates. Doing so is a violation of our terms of service.
I suggest that you contact Joel Sauceda on his Facebook site and ask that members of the site in question no longer contact 50statesclassifieds.com peeps
I asked several of the BVD users politely, and later, put up a polite giant red notice on the contact page, and then later still, posted a much ruder, much larger, much redder note on the contact page, and yet the spam volume just kept going up and I got zero response. after I completely disabled the privacy mail system, and wrote the angry blog post about it, it stopped – but only because I disabled the mail system and they had no way to persist. If they do it again I will certainly take your advice and contact the owner, presuming that he will respond or care. I don’t hold much hope in most cases. I have learned the hard way, it usually does no use to request removal, spam is just something we all have to deal with as a price of being online, but at least we can all fight back by telling the public who is responsible for the aggravating spam we’re receiving, and publicly shaming spammers into doing the right thing (hopefully). Most don’t care, but a few may care and that’s better than nothing…
I’m going to assume however that by registering with 50statesclassifieds and then logging in one could post adverts for the aforementioned site. Would that be cool?
We have yet to hear a single apology from any of the people who spammed the site or from the company itself, and as a rule, anyone who spams us that badly is generally not welcome any time in the near future. Perhaps the BVD affiliates were just a little bit too eager, and a little bit new to the internet, therefore don’t understand netiquette, and didn’t mean to be spammers. Since not one of them ever apologized or acknowledged that they understood that they had done something wrong and not one of them said they would not do it again, I have no idea if that is the case or not.
I hope you’ll understand what I mean when I say, “Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me”. If we would decide to give a company a second chance, and they screwed up again, there would be no third chance.
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