I wrote an article some time ago about John McCain‘s continuous spamming of my email account upon numerous requests to be removed from his mailing list.
Well…. another mailing list, an irish one this time, is doing something similar with my email address and it bugs the life out of me.
ApartmentsDirect.ie have continuously sent me emails even though I have requested on at least 5 occassions to be removed from the mailing list. I’ve also reported them to their ISPÂ to no avail.
So, my last hope now is that this post will get to the top of Google for “Apartments Direct”.  And that Apartments Direct see this post and take action to remove me from their mailing list…..
#1 by Paola Corsi at January 10th, 2008
| Quote
Hi,
I’m an Italian letting agent.
They have been sending so many many emails to me, too, although I’ve never requested them. Really annoying method!!
#2 by apartments direct at October 19th, 2008
| Quote
Found this site in google so looked like it worked for the term “apartmentsdirect” or apartments direct who are located in Ireland. You neever posted back how you got on with apartmentsdirect and if you stopped getting spam from “apartments direct”
Anyway I hope this new post gives you an extra bump as you were ar the bottom of page 1 in Google for the term apartmentsdirect
#3 by Tom Doyle at October 20th, 2008
| Quote
I don’t receive the emails anymore and since it was last year, the blog is no longer on top of the search engines.
I never got an apology from them or anything of the like…
#4 by Patrick Skelly at May 4th, 2009
| Quote
Dear Mr. Tom Doyle, I am the owner of apartmentsdirect.ie and I would like to make some very important points about the two persons mentioned above, namely Tom Doyle and Paola Corsi.
POINT 1: Paola Corsi.
There is an advertisers account registered on our web site to the name of Ms. Paola Corsi. I am only mentioning this persons name because they have already mentioned their name here. For obvious reasons I will not display this persons account details here. Ms. Paola Corsi registered an advertisers account on our web site on the 29th October 2007 and freely supplied us with her full name and postal address and also her email address. This is the reason why Ms. Paola Corsi was receiving our marketing emails. This person did unsubscribe from our mailing list using the automated unsubscribe facility we include in ALL our marketing emails and has not receive any further emails from us. We have not and never did Spam Ms. Paola Corsi.
POINT 2: Tom Doyle
Sometime around 2005/06 I was given Mr. Tom Doyle’s name by a friend of Mr Doyle’s who I paid IN FULL to do some work for me on my web site but this person was unable to complete the work he was paid in full to do. I subsequently had to take legal action to get my money back, which I did, in the end.
I contacted Mr. Tom Doyle of 2bscene with the view of getting him to do some SEO work for me. I am not going to go into why I did not employ Mr. Tom Doyle’s SEO services, however, Mr. Tom Doyle created two separate test advertisers accounts on our system with two different email addresses. The reason he created these accounts was so he could “better understand our web site�, these are his words and his reason. Mr. Tom Doyle supplied his address details and email address for both these two test accounts. Each test account had a different email address.
Mr. Tom Doyle made two requests, at different times, to have his email addresses removed from our mailing list. When we received his first request we removed him from our mailing list. However, we subsequently received a second request from Tom Doyle stating that he had already requested to be removed from our mailing list but he was still receiving our marketing emails. I personally checked the email address he requested to be removed and found that this email address was removed from our mailing list and that he did not receive any more marketing emails to this particular email address. I then checked further and found his second email address, which was registered to the second test advertisers account he created on our web site and which was also different from his first email address we removed. It was this second, different, email address, he received our marketing email to and which he never requested to be unsubscribe from our mailing list nor did he use the automated unsubscribe facility located within our marketing emails to him.
I personally sent Mr. Tom Doyle an email outlining to him the two different email address and that they were both removed from our mailing list. In fact, if my memory serves me correct, I actually rang Tom Doyle as well to explain to him what had happened. I think Tom can, and in fact, has already confirmed that he has not received any marketing emails from us since I personally emailed him outlining the reason he got an email from us after he removed his first email address.
My company does not Spam any email address as it is a practice I personally do not like or agree with.
That said, I do wish people would give full and complete details when they are posting stuff like this. I also would give some free legal advice to owners of sites such as this, that when they publish false, misleading or incomplete information in the public domain they are legally responsible for such false, misleading or incomplete information.
4th May 2009. Tom Doyle, I hereby request that you remove any false, misleading or incomplete information about my web site from all of your web sites or any web site you have posted such information and you confirm this action has being taken.
Tom, I hope you publish my response on your web site as I am entitled to put the record straight.
Kind Regards
Patrick Skelly
Apartments Direct Limited
#5 by Tom Doyle at May 5th, 2009
| Quote
Hi Patrick
I’ve got no problem with you trying to outline your side of the story. That’s what we have comments for. However, your response is quite inaccurate.
Yes I did quote on a project for you, however I never once asked to be put on any mailing list of yours. Your newsletter was completely unrelated to any SEO project that I would have been quoting on. I accept the fact that you could possibly have had my @2bscene.net email account on your system, but you would never have had @2bscene.ie on it, because at the time of dealing with you, we didn’t promote the .ie domain name. So this makes it clear that you added my email addresses without my approval. This of couse is against EU legislation which requires you to send a confirmation email address upon someone registering their email account with you. I of course never recevied one of these at either email address which is in breach of this legislation.
I have every copy of email sent to you asking to be unsubscribed and the number of times I requested for the email to be removed. I kept all these emails in case I had to take things further. Here’s a breakdown of the requests:
1. 18/10/06
2. 30/04/07
3. 03/05/07
4. 05/06/07
5. 11/07/07
6. 13/07/07 (This is where I threatened that I would report you for spamming if you didn’t remove me from the mailing list)
7. 16/07/07 (I plead again)
8. 07/08/07
On Friday the 24th of August, I subsequently reported you for spamming to your ISP and my own, as I had completely had enough at this stage.
I recieved a response to the situation on the 26th of November 2007, not an apology and certainly never received a phone call. The email you sent tried to shift blame and ignored the fact that if you had of closely looked at the email, you could have seen that you were spamming the @2bscene.net email address. An email address that I might add was a forwarder.
If you had of once personally responded and told me you were working on it (before I posted this article), I never would have mentioned you on this blog. As stated in my post at the time, I was hoping that you would actually spot this on the search engines and get in touch with me.
The bottom line is that I did not once ask to be part of this mailing list, regardless of your claims. Maybe you thought it would have been a good idea to add me at the time, but I certainly didn’t request it. After 8 requests my email wasn’t removed from the list – which frustrated the life out of me. Another note to be added is that you were spamming a PERSONAL email address and I could have taken the case much further.
Oh and next time you plan to threaten me with legal action – please don’t leave messages on my business phone. This blog is not related in anyway to my business, it’s a personal website…. so please email me at tom@tomdoyletalk.com
Tom
#6 by Patrick Skelly at May 7th, 2009
| Quote
Tom
My post on your tomdoyletalk.com web site is an accurate account of this.
You DID create two advertisers accounts on our system and you DID enter the email addresses you received marketing emails from us on. You say one of the email addresses you received our marketing emails to, your .ie address, is an email address you “we didn’t promote the .ie domain name”.
If you never promoted this domain, which I fully accept you didn’t, then how do you think this email address, which you never promoted, ended up in our mailing list?
The only way it could have ended up on our mailing list is because this email address was entered into an advertisers account, which was created by someone who called themselves Tom Doyle and entered this email address.
You are correct when you say our marketing emails had nothing whatsoever to do with SEO and why would they? We were mailing the owners of all registered advertisers accounts and as there were two registered advertisers accounts with email addresses owned by you, one of which you state “we didn’t promote the .ie domain name”. Again I ask you how did we get this email address if you never promoted the .ie domain? Are you suggesting that we made this email address up and not only that, but that we made it up so we could send our property advertising related marketing emails to a company who providers SEO services? I don’t think so Tom.
Regarding the telephone call, I did call you to explain why you were receiving our marketing emails after we had removed your email address and also explained that the email address you received our marketing email to was to a different email address to the one we had unsubscribed.
Tom I have no desire to enter into an argue, legal or otherwise, with you but I did not spam you at all and if you read our advertisers terms and conditions you will see that by registering an advertisers account, you or someone with the same name as you and with access to both your email addresses, one of which you never promoted, registered two advertisers accounts on our web site, you give us your permission to send you our marketing emails. Furthermore, you also accept that we cannot and do not guarantee that we will receive any remove requests. If you wish to read our advertisers terms please click on the following link
http://www.apartmentsdirect.ie/terms_advertisement.php
As you have falsely reported me to my ISP for spamming you, which we clearly haven’t, I hereby request that you contact our ISP again and retract your false spamming claim against me and also remove all reference to me and my web site from your web site and any other web site you may have posted on.
Please confirm that this has being done.
Again Tom, I do wish to get into any kind of an argument with you but you have made very serious false claims against my company and I will pass this over to my solicitors by the end of this week if you do not remove all reference to me and my web site from your web site and any other web site you may have posted on.
Kind Regards
Patrick
#7 by Tom Doyle at May 7th, 2009
| Quote
Patrick
You know you sent this email to me on Tuesday privately and I have responded. If you want me to make that response public I will, I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
I have stated my case above and I think it’s quite clear.
I NEVER created any account on your website. However, let’s be clear that was never my issue, my issue was the fact that you never, after 8 requests, removed my details from your database which is a breach of the Data Privacy Amendment Act of 2003.
Unless you have anything else to add to this matter, the case is closed.
Tom
#8 by Patrick Skelly at May 7th, 2009
| Quote
Does this post stink of Sour Grapes?
Tom Doyle has confirmed that he, or his company, quoted my company for some SEO work but I did not take him up on his offer.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I am not going to go into why I did not employ Tom Doyle and his company but we apparently had in our mailing list, an email address, which in Tom’s own words “we didn’t promote the .ie domain nameâ€?.
Now HOW did this secret email address, which Tom or his company did not promote, get onto our mailing list ? ? ?
The answer is he, Tom Doyle used this secret email address to register a test advertisers account on our web site for the purposes of him putting together a quote for some SEO work.
It is as simple as that!
So I ask anyone who reads this post to ask themselves, does this post stink of Sour Grapes?
Thank you for your time in reading my replies.
Regards
Patrick Skelly
#9 by Tom Doyle at May 7th, 2009
| Quote
Hi Patrick
Firstly, let me reiterate – I NEVER registered my details with your website, not the .ie nor the .net.
I know for a fact that my @2bscene.ie account was not on your system. How do I know?
Apart from what I have already told you, I only evern received mail from your website to the .net email account…. I have a lot more proof which I will pass to my solicitors on receipt of your legal threat.
You know this has nothing to do with sour grapes. I dealt with you 2 years before this came to light.
I constantly asked you to remove my details from your database, you didn’t after 8 attempts without even an apology. This is a customer service that I simply can’t respect and so I posted an article on my blog about it.
The fact that you pointed to your terms and conditions which are in breach of the Data Privacy Act also shows that your company does not take spamming seriously enough.
For those that haven’t read it….
It is your duty as the person storing personal information on your computer system to ensure its integrity. You must remove or change details of my information on my request. It is not up to me to make sure your system of notification works, the onus is entirely on you. Might I add that there was no “automated unsubscribe facility” when I first requested removal from your mailing list.
As I mentioned to you privately in our last email discussion, I have no problem setting the record straight and posting an article about your company stating that you are fully compliant with the Data Privacy act if and when you are. So let me know when you are and I will gladly do this for you.
Tom
#10 by sri at December 17th, 2015
| Quote
Hi,
I had bad exp with Patrick Skelly too. This particular person is full of litigation and always threatens people with legal actions.
I am sure so many professional like me engaged with him and I am really sad for him. Hope one day he will understand himself where is standing on respectable irish society. Irish people are genuine, understanding and nice, I hope he will be good irish person one fine day.