[Catalyst] Maxipoint Spam

[Jon Jensen]

On Thu, 6 Apr 2006, Christopher H. Laco wrote:

>>>> I suspect they spammed the entire authors list. It's being discussed 
>>>> on london.pm and Rocco mentioned it in #poe
>>>
>>> The CPAN authors list?
>>> I was betting that it was to every author found in any module
>>> named Catalyst::
>>
>> No, even I just got one, and I sure donÿÿt have a module with
>> `Catalyst::` in its name in my CPAN directory.
>>
>> Hrmf. I wish I hadnÿÿt been so twitchy with the delete fingerÿÿ
>> someone post this on use Perl so that Google will pick it up,
>> title: ÿÿMaxipoint Hosting are spammers,ÿÿ with a copy of the mail
>> enclosed. Gotta punish as you canÿÿ
>>
>> Regards,
>
> Earlier...
>
> http://use.perl.org/~Mr.+Muskrat/journal/29242?from=rss

I found their original post to this list to be helpful, and in fact signed 
up for a hosting account with them to see if it was any good. I hadn't 
heard of them before, but doing a little online research didn't turn up 
any dirt about them, so I went ahead.

Unfortunately, shortly thereafter I (and everyone else, it seems) got 
their email to my CPAN address via PAUSE, which I do consider spam.

One thing worse than getting lots of spam is inadvertently supporting 
spammers financially, so hoping against hope, I asked for a refund since a 
hosting account that's blacklisted everywhere isn't going to be much use 
to me.

They refunded the fees to my credit card within minutes, and apologized.

I find this quite unusual, and thought I should mention it here, since it 
seems perhaps they're just a little out of touch in their email etiquette 
and honestly may not have realized that "Perl/Catalyst hosting" messages 
sent to all CPAN authors are not highly appreciated informational messages 
among friends, but really just spam. I suspect they've learned their 
lesson, though, and I think it may be worth trying to educate them and 
give them a second chance, rather than dismiss them as Bad People.

Anyway, that's just the conclusion I came up with since I have never seen 
someone give me a refund so willingly and quickly after a single simple 
request.

FWIW,
Jon