Cleartrip fires PR agency after “three strikes” of spamming | Hacker News Reader

Cleartrip fires PR agency after “three strikes” of spamming

thenextweb.com

23 pointsshrikant7 comments

Original article:

http://blog.cleartrip.com/2012/12/05/why-we-fired-our-pr-age...

Why the PR agency didn't stop after the first "talk" from their clients is beyond me. They're either really dumb, incompetent or really brazen. Or an unholy combination of all three.

I'd guess a lack of responsibility within the organization (i.e. procedures are set up that result in spam, and nobody is really in charge of it) or a lack of organization (the customer contacts have no control over the people doing the spamming). Either one fits into your "incompetent" category, of course.

I'd love to see an honest discussion on startups and PR firms:

a) at which stage they are most useful (e.g. are they already helpful at an early stage for those founders who are not that great self-promoters)

b) what to expect/what to look for

c) experiences with different agencies

d) rough numbers on what they are costing

e) what are good/bad uses them for (e.g. for example the article mentions that they used them for blogger outreach, which in my eyes would seems much more authentic if it came from within company)

It would be interesting to understand how agreements are reached with PR Firms, and how to negotiate those contracts in the most beneficial way also.

I'm sure there are some good books on the topic right?

It is unfortunate but the problem lies in the general issue with the Indian Judiciary where actions takes lots of time and money to be executed.

Let me explain that.

Spamming is 'illegal' in India too but like most other 'illegal' things, specially in the new media, the IT and Internet, there are no quick way of punishing the culprit. As victims, we have no clear ways to tackle or resolve the problem. This escalates to an attitude of 'let it be', popularly termed "Chalta Hain" here in India, by these gullible spammers. None have seen no spammer lose anything for spamming - court orders, fine, no nothing.

So, these spammers continue to do so and we, the victims, suffer either silently or through our own ways of filtering them as spam. I was once told very blatantly by a spammer that they are doing a social call by feeding me and others 'useful information'.

Here, your email will be just added to a mailing list without your consent any-day. To this date, I receive 'Press Releases' from PR Agencies all the time with no option to 'unsubscribe'. I've been threatened for proactively suggesting to them to 'shove it up their a.' The only option is to set a filter them to spam, which is an irritating and time consuming task.

These are the notes rendering the fate of spam victims in India and I don't really see any respite anytime soon.

I don't understand the backlash they got for this story coming to light; when customers are being exploited (and especially repeatedly after asking them not to), the offending company deserves the heat. If this means certain brands decide to work with this company after this to cross-pollinate addresses, it just saves us the time of recognizing their legitimacy.

Perhaps getting fired was their best PR stunt. No news is bad news and all that..and it did make the front page of HN. And Cleartrip comes out looking OK.

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