[Question] Connected Advertising / email from: connected010@telkomsa.net

[padjakkels]

They advertise marketing items such as licence disc holders and calenders.

When they reply, they use the following email address: connected6@telkomsa.net

They have a 041 telephone number, which I called and the lady that send the email answered. Apparantly she is a sales consult for the company she is working -> Connected Advertising.

I could not find such a business when I googled.

I've asked her for their company's website address to look at other products. But she has not replied yet on my email.

Any one think this is a scam?

Just strange that she is not working through the company official website and email addresses.

Attached the email source, and the last 2 pages is the actual email.

[Dave A]

There are a few "reasonably legitimate*" reasons why this sort of thing happens -

1. A lot of spammers like to use a big ISP email account.
It's less likely to get blocked by spam filters.
If spam filter programs start impacting delivery, you just drop the email address and start spamming from another one.

2. There are quite a few individuals who sell this sort of promo material as a one person business.
They know where to go to get the stuff made up cost effectively.
Rather than operate on commission selling for someone else, they control their margin by buying from the manufacturer and selling on to the client.

*depends on your definition of reasonable and legitimate in the area of direct, unsolicited marketing

[padjakkels]

Thanks for the reply Dave.

1. That makes sense. They even came back to offer me email marketing service... send to 10,000 emails for Rx amount.

2. Also got that idea. They take a long time to come back, if they do, with a quote...

The website they have is also offline for maintenance as they are updating the xmas specials.... I went to the waybackmachine to have a look at the previous websites, and they didn't have a lot of info on them.

The do have a facebook page, but no 'business' details on it.

So it is a direct, unsolicited markerting strategy that they use. Wonder if it works actually. I would rather do business with a company that have everything in order, pay a little more, but are certain of quality and good service.