Tag: email

“Your Past Due” Verizon Email Scam

We received a weird email recently supposedly from Verizon Wireless saying we have not paid our cellphone bill and that we need to pay immediately or they will cut off our service.  Here is the beginning of the email;

Your Verizon Wireless account is still past due. If a payment is not made in full immediately, we may suspend services on your account and a $15 per line reconnection fee will be charged to reinstate your account.

Sounded weird since to our knowledge there was no outstanding balance and the language seemed iffy.  However, since the email looked like it came from Verizon Wireless we thought we would check.  We called them and they said they had not sent us an email, so it is a phishing Verizon email scam.  Here is a screenshot I took of the email;

verizon email scam If you have received this email DO NOT give them any of your personal information.  If you give them your bank, credit card, or your social security number they will empty all your funds.  If you are concerned that you might have forgot to pay Verizon, I would check with them to confirm that your account is not “past due.”

This Verizon email scam reminds of the Apple “Verify Your Account” phishing email for iTunes I wrote about awhile ago.  It is similarly well constructed as they are using a good email template to make it look like they are Verizon Wireless.  A lot of the links even go to VZWshop.com and the email was sent from this domain, which is owned by Verizon.

I imagine a lot of these Verizon Wireless scam emails are being sent out right now during the holiday seasons since most people are busy doing holiday shopping.  I'm sure a lot of people reading this post are getting to leave or have people visit from out of town for the holidays.  Having you cellphone service turned off unexpectedly is the last thing you would want, right?

If you received this Verizon Wireless scam email and found this post helpful, please let me know.  I will continue to write short posts when I get these to inform people if I know others are finding it useful.  Also if you have friends, family, neighbors that use Verizon Wireless please share this and inform them.  They might this fake Verizon scam email too and you wouldn't want to make a mistake.

Luckily the email scammers haven't got us this time.  Of course Verizon has every month with terrible internet speeds (downtime too) and their outrageous bills. 🙂

Jack Threads ruins Breaking Bad Finale in Email Spoiler

breaking bad finale

Jack Threads, an online retailer for mens clothes, has just made a big mistake with the Breaking Bad Finale.  Last night an email was sent out by the company which had a spoiler for the Breaking Bad ending in the subject line.

Since I haven't seen the Breaking Bad Finale, or any of the final episodes yet, it isn't clear to me whether it was a fake spoiler or the real thing.  Either way it clearly was a stupid move by the menswear company.  I checked Jack Thread's Twitter feed and they have been getting a lot of customer backlash over the email.  Whoever decided it would be edgy, fun, and with the times clearly needs to be fired.   I mean seriously, what the fuck were you thinking?  Checkout all the Tweets that were sent out by angry Breaking Bad fans that were on the Jack Threads email list.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess Jack Thread's assumes everyone has a cable, a Digital Video Recorder (DVR), and doesn't watch Football on Sundays.  I guess they don't do much market research for their target audience then.  This leads me to assume Jack Threads employees are butt fuckers that are complete amateurs at digital and email marketing.

I should make it clear that I am actually not on Jack Thread‘s email list and I don't buy from them.  I heard someone complaining about it yesterday when he checked his email.  (While we obviously were not watching Breaking Bad.)  He was furious and wrote them a long angry letter and said he isn't going to buy from them anymore.

Personally now I am definitely NOT going to join Jack Thread's email list or buy anything from them.  Even if the spoiler turns out to be fake, it isn't a good tactic to intentionally trick or mislead customers that are on an email list.  Typically these customers are the most loyal and profitable for a company.

Did you get the Jack Thread Breaking Bad spoiler email?  Were you angry they ruined the Breaking Bad ending for you?  Are you not going to buy clothes from them again?  Let me know how you feel about it below as I'd be interested to hear what Jack Thread's customers think about the Breaking Bad Finale spoiler.

Gmail Tabs make Email Enjoyable Again

Gmail, the most widely used email service in the world, has just added a great new email tabs feature.  Since the new Gmail tabs are going to be affecting a lot of people it is something I thought we could be exploring together.

To get a better idea, without me explaining, here is a video Google released on May 29th showcasing Gmail's updated tabs.  The title of the video is “Meet Gmail's New Inbox.”  Google of course uses a great Motown song “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelletes as the soundtrack.

New customizable tabs put you back in control so that you can see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read and when.

I like how in the beginning the video it reads, “Inboxes can be overwhelming” which is sooo true.  However as the video points out “Unless you have the new Gmail inbox.”

gmail tabs

Basically what this means is Google has several tabs for your inbox now and it automatically sorts incoming email into those different tab categories.  What are the different Gmail tabs?

  • Primary – This is for all your important emails from say friends, family, etc.  As Google describes it in the video “One tab for email you really, really want to see.”
  • Social – Essentially any emails or updates from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.  What is surprising to me is that the
  • Promotions – This tab is for any promotions or special offer emails.  So you love Groupon or getting special Amazon deals this is where all those emails would go.
  • Updates – This is where you put any orders you have made from online retailers or shipping information or order status updates you might receive from them.
  • Forums – If you take part in any discussion forums this will sort your emails from them into this tab.  Reply to topic emails will go in here too.

Gmail defaults to using Primary, Social, and the Promotions tabs.  You can add the Updates and Forums tabs if you want or feel the need.  Since Gmail  sorts the emails automatically it may not put the right email in the right Gmail tab category.  If you don't feel like Gmail sorted an email correctly you can Drag and Drop an email into the tab you want.  Any future email from that sender will go into that specified Gmail tab.  So if an email that should go in the Promotions tab goes into Primary, and you drop into Promotions, all future emails go into the Promotions tab.

Personally I have found the new Gmail tabs extremely useful and a huge time saver.  For the most part Gmail is very accurate in sorting emails but once in awhile it will get it wrong.  Hey, it is is a computer doing the sorting and not you.  Still, this makes me love Gmail and all it's other great features even more. Kudos to Google and the Gmail team that came up with the Gmail tabs idea.  As it said at the end of the video, “The inbox has gone Google.”

What is interesting to note is that the pre-filtered “Promotion” tab has caused a lot of internet marketers and those that have email lists to become quite concerned.  Since Gmail rolled out the tab features about 2 weeks ago all of the those emails go into Promotions mostly.  If an email slips by and goes into Primary I usually immediately drop into the Promotions tab.  I don't open these emails nearly as much anymore.  A lot of emails from these people are titled “Urgent”, “Don't leave in Promotions”, “Open if you use Gmail” and more things like that.  It is clear email open rates have gone waaay done Gmail tabs rolled out.  Sorry, but you guys are staying in Promotions since it is making my life a lot easier! 🙂

The only complaint I have is it would be nice if you could customize the tab lables.  A Primary tab isn't a problem but I might want to relabel the other tabs to fit my personal email needs.  Other than I think is is a great Gmail update.

While the Gmail tabs change is not good for companies or marketers, it certainly is for Gmail's 1 billion+ users.  Since Google is always says they are focused on the user experience it is great they back it up with great changes to products.  I totally love the new and updated Gmail tabs and look forward to Google's continued improvements to Gmail in the future.

What are your thoughts about Gmail's new tabs?  Do you love it as much as I do?  Is it saving you time?  If you run an email list have you seen a drop in open rates?  What do you think Google could have done better with Gmail tabs?

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