I like to keep my work inbox clear for important emails. So, I objected when Kogan started spamming me, especially as I would never buy from known grey market/parallel importer. And I always use a Gmail address, not my work email for junk mail.
It all started on Sunday 14 May when Kogan sent to my work email a “Congratulations for signing up to Kogan.com – Amazing deals start now”.
I immediately hit unsubscribe. And then sent it, as you do with unwelcome junk, to report@submit.spam.acma.gov.au. I recommend you put that email address on your speed-dial!
Not satisfied I also sent the following email to Kogan, well why not!
Dear Sir or Madam
I have never signed up for Kogan and I never will. I consider this a gross invasion of my privacy and have reported this unwelcome spam email to the ACMA.
Naturally, I wish to raise a formal complaint with Kogan and expect a full apology along with an explanation of where my email address was sourced from and what information you hold on me.
Low and behold, I kept receiving Kogan emails and kept reporting them to the ACMA.
Kogan then sent an unsubscribe acknowledgement. But they had not answered my questions. “Where did the email address come from and what information did they hold on me?”
Well, despite five further emails it cannot, sorry, will not answer the two simple questions.
As you have not made an account, we have no information apart from the name and email that was placed within the ‘Join Newsletter’ box as per the screenshot in my earlier email.
We do not subscribe customer’s emails to our newsletter within this section unless requested from the customer directly, and I can see we have not been contacted by yourself whatsoever apart from this thread, therefore I am unsure who has done this with your email.
It might be an idea to look into if someone may have done this on your behalf for some reason. Sorry, we cannot help further in regards to this.
To claim someone else has enrolled me is patent rubbish.
Under clause 6 of its privacy policy, I have asked for access to my personal information in the customer account database, or seek correction of it. Refused.
Kogan is the highest recipient of Fair-Trading NSW complaints.
We reported on rampant customer dissatisfaction back in February.
Kogan has had 17/21/26 complaints in March/April/May 2020.
However, the focus over the past three months is on the masses of complaints against travel operators. Like Fight Centre, Qantas, Jetstar, Webjet, Luxury Escapes Travel, Top Deck Travel and Trip A Deal for not refunding due to COVID.
And Trustpilot is full of about 1000 new bad reports. A new one is an apparent deception to get $99 out of you by offering free membership for 5-days. It is a ‘well-designed trap’ taking money out of your mandatory credit card guarantee.
Oh, Kogan, you have done it again, and again, and again and now again.
Remember, there are only seven deadly sins, and you have probably used six!
I might be wrong as I sometimes stay up binge shopping all over for cheap little trinkets for my daughter. But I think I saw a share deal where if you share Kogan’s link with someone else you get a 10% discount or something to that effect. Perhaps this is how they’ve attained you’re information.. ? Although I must say, I have 4 different email addresses and I only signed up to Kogan with one of them, now my entire range of email addresses are being spammed with about 10 ~ 20 email’s a day from them, sooo.. Buggered if I know.
Grab the money and run when it comes too Kogan. I am shareholder and as soon as the price gets back to my buy price I am OUT. You are fooling yourselves if you think Kogan will ever change. All it does is extract money from valued shareholders.
I occasionally buy from Kogan but not their electronics grey imports. When I have finished buying I then put Kogan on auto delete. I also have my browser based email set to not show images so Kogan gets no acknowledgement that they have even hit my mailbox. They give up after a very short time. My browser also blocks trackers.
I dont like Kogan. They are unethical. I started with Dick Smith. Unsubscribed. Hey presto, now im subscribed to Kogan. Unsubscribed. Hey presto, now I am subscribed to Matt Black. Unsubscribed. Wow, now Dick is back. Wait, theres more. Kogan is back. Different subdomains. vip.kogan. They must think it is funny. I reported them to ACMA. Im a developer and I don’t like childish behaviour like that. Thanks for posting this topic. Wish I had of found it sooner.
Yes, it is a rabbit hole and ACMA is aware of the issues. The Kogan group appears desperate to make sales. Kogan’s share price was down to $10.80 today from a high of $25 late last year.
A google search for Matt Black, Dick Smith and Kogan led me here.
Out of the blue, I found 3 spam emails from them yesterday in my inbox. They must be connected to the same database.
I’d shopped once with Kogan nearly 3 years ago, and had immediately removed myself from all their mailing lists.
I’ve never even shopped with Matt Black, so not sure how they’ve decided to email me, and how Kogan has suddenly reactivated and decided to ‘welcome (me) back’.
Annoying. Thanks for the post. I’ve reported them to ACMA.
Multiple complaints to ACMA for spam, unsubscribing via the URL in the SMS everytime (10+), contacting customer “care”. Still getting SMS.
The only thing that gave me an actual “you are unsubscribed” notification was text “SMS STOP” to 0419 511 556 as per the ironic page at https://www.kogan.com/au/spam-act-policy/
Time will tell if it did anything. Next step is scripting customer support requests to overcome their 1 every 10 min rate limit.