NYTimes offers discounts in mistaken email gaffe

Yahoo finance ^ | 12/28/2011 | AP

[Silentgypsy]

NEW YORK (AP) -- In today's digital age, it's easy to send out an email by mistake — even for a company that's in the business of communication.

The New York Times thought it was sending an email to a few hundred people who had recently canceled subscriptions, offering them a 50 percent discount for 16 weeks to lure them back.

Instead, Wednesday's offer went to 8.6 million email addresses of people who had given them to the Times.

That was the first mistake.

[Silentgypsy]

There's nothing funny about this. (*giggle*)

[PetroniusMaximus]

“Instead, Wednesday’s offer went to 8.6 million email addresses of people who had given them to the Times.”

Based on my experience, this kind of mistake in not that easy to make.

[ncfool]

It was their way of trying to get 8,600,000 subscribers back. I bet it doesn’t work. By By NY Slimes..

[RightGeek]

Why isn’t the NY State Attorney General making them honor the discount offer?

[Old Sarge]

NYT-Obama is NOT in the business of communication. Its mission is propaganda for The Glorious Cause Of World Socialism. Its raison d’etre is keeping the Kenyan Muslim in power, by any means necessary.

It’s not called “Pravda On The Hudson” for no reason.

[bigbob]

out of that 8.6 mil there’s probably only a couple dozen who care what the Slimes has to say anyway!

[Silentgypsy]

I think I read that Anonymous is claiming credit for it, those little devils.

[Darksheare]

“Send to all”

Yeah, that works.
LOL.

The Old Grey Harlot in NY keeps pushing the gaffes out, doesn’t she?

[vbmoneyspender]

Shouldn’t there be a federal investigation of this followed by the creation of a cabinet level department to ensure that mistakes like this don’t happen again?

[ThunderSleeps]

Offer me any discount. I wouldn’t read it if it were free. In fact, they’d have to pay me a generous, very generous wage to take the time to read it.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Gaffe-O-Matic Biden must have recently become a Slimes member of the board.

[Silentgypsy]

Please don’t give them any more ideas. :)

[proxy_user]

“Based on my experience, this kind of mistake in not that easy to make.”

I don’t know, I have seen plenty of cases where people have selected the wrong mail group based on the similarity of names, or accidentally clicked on the wrong one. It depends on the user interface in their system, but it might be pretty easy to do.

[Hawthorn]

A “mistaken” gaffe? Since when is there such a thing as an “unmistaken” gaffe?

[Oztrich Boy]

So, Now we know where Tony Weiner is working now.

[Tammy8]

What will be funny is when they find out how few people want to read their paper even at the discount rate.

[GonzoGOP]

I don’t know, I have seen plenty of cases where people have selected the wrong mail group based on the similarity of names, or accidentally clicked on the wrong one. It depends on the user interface in their system, but it might be pretty easy to do.

This is why when running auto emails from a database you always do a test run. It does everything but the send() command. You then check the counter to see how many emails it tried to send and compare that to the number you expected it to send. If they don't match you don't push the button on the live system. At work before I send out any batch emails I always have to sign off that a test has been run complete with actual and expected results.