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It is still abusive, to represent that they need it for transactional purposes and then to spam you with it instead.

Flightfox just posted an article about how they more aggressively pursue potential customers with email, and it's doubled their conversion rate.

How is this isolated example of snail-mail marketing at all creepy? As long as it's Verizon and not a third party, it isn't strange at all.

There's a difference between "strange" and "creepy".

Something can be really common and still really creepy.