The Good: I got a free hat from insidetheropes.com.
The Bad: my MicronPC 19" Trinitron monitor (about two weeks old) went south (i.e., stopped working properly).
The Ugly: I got a free hat from insidetheropes.com
The Brucie: MicronPC.com, insidetheropes.com.
 

The Bad
I'll discuss this first, because the description of the Good and Ugly is longer.
My new monitor from MicronPC went kaput on Wednesday evening (Sept. 29) as I was in the middle of finalizing an important document for a client).  I reported the problem to MicronPC on Thursday morning; and on Friday morning, a new monitor arrived at my door via UPS.  UPS will return the defective monitor, courtesy of MicronPC; they will collect it at my house once I have it packaged for shipping.

I was unhappy that the monitor was defective.  I am very impressed, however with MicronPC's quick and effective response.  I did not have to move an inch.  MicronPC has earned a Brucie.
 

The Good
On Friday, September 24, Tom Auclair, Editor-in-Chief of insidetheropes.com announced a contest for free insidetheropes.com hats during an interview about the Ryder Cup on the Dennis and Callahan Show on WEEI radio; the first 100 respondents would receive a free hat.  With MediaOne RoadRunner service running nearly 24/7, how could I pass on this opportunity (I am collecting .com-clothing in order to be properly dressed for the E-commerce Marketing course that I will be leading in the Spring of 2000).  I was one of the winners.

The Ugly
On Friday, September 24, Tom Auclair, Editor-in-Chief of insidetheropes.com announced the contest winners via email.  All contest winners were placed on the "cc" line of the email.  By doing this, each email recipient became aware of all other contest winner's email addresses (n.b., had "bcc" been used, all of the email addresses would have remained private).  Unfortunately, one of the contest winners, once armed with the contest winners' email addresses, sent out Spam/Garbage to all of the other contest winners.  I was not happy to receive the Spam.  I was not aware of insidetheropes privacy policy (I didn't see an explanation of it on their website), however, I didn't imagine that they would distribute my email in this manner.

The Brucie for insidetheropes.com
Huh, what?  I believe that Tom Auclair took the proper procedures to make amends, and he exhibited good business practice by being upfront on the insidetheropes.com website (and, on a separate matter, in providing free hats to all contest respondents).

First, I emailed Tom Auclair and informed him about what had happened:

"Dear Tom:

I am a professor of marketing and e-commerce at Boston University and I want to provide you with some free consulting on PRIVACY and running an e-commerce business.

Insidetheropes.com has violated my privacy and trust by distributing my email name to people outside of your organization (I recognize that this
was probably not intended).  Because of my email name going out to others (whom I do not know), I am getting Spam/garbage sent to me (see
email below, and I know that you received it too).  (Whether the content is true -- it's not -- is irrelevant.  My email address should be respected and protected.)

Use the "bcc" (not "cc") feature to send out broadcasts and keep email addresses private.

I will probably post this on my website.  Please respond so that I will be giving you a fair shake.

Sincerely yours,

Bruce D. Weinberg"

He responded promptly and with full exposure on what had happened with respect to the contest winner notification email, and other related events.  He acknowledged to me that using the "bcc" is their policy and that a mistake had occurred.  In addition, he posted a description of the what had happened during the hat contest situation and apologized to all on the insidetheropes.com website. (See posting from insidetheropes.com website below.  I did not include the link to the specific webpage because its content will change periodically.)
 

Posting at insidetheropes.com with regard to the free hat contest
                 NORTH SMITHFIELD, RI....I think I have an idea how Colin Montgomerie
                 was feeling with some of the abuse he took from the spectators at last week's
                 Ryder Cup. No one has verbally attacked my family, but they have taken shots at
                 my baby.

                 My baby is insidetheropes.com and what I am referring to is an incident that
                 occurred late last week and has become pretty serious. It all involves giving and
                 some perceived less than straight-forward and honest tactics. The majority of our
                 visitors have neither knowledge of, nor an understanding of this particular issue.
                 To you, I ask for your patience during the next few days that this feature appears.
                 It is important. I'll try to summarize the events leading to this column without
                 totally boring you.

                 Last Friday, I appeared on a radio talkshow in Boston. The name of the show is
                 the Dennis and Callahan Show. I appear on many different broadcasts in local,
                 national and international markets. The Boston market is especially close to my
                 heart because it is my home market. In addition to that, I have been doing the
                 John Dennis Golf Show throughout the summer and have come to know the host
                 to be a professional's professional. Basically, he is among the best that do what
                 he does.

                 Anyway, he and his co-host, Callahan, have unseated IMUS-in-the-morning.
                 That means they are on the air from 6am - 10 am daily. On Friday, they were
                 broadcasting live from the Country Club in Brookline, and invited me on their
                 show. I think I speak for all when I said we had a good time. I know I did.

                 At the end of the show, I said I would give 100 insidetheropes.com hats to the
                 first 100 listeners that visited our site and e-mailed us. The hats have been a hot
                 item ever since they debuted a couple of months ago, and the response from
                 listeners continued the streak.

                 A very popular item.

                 We received many, many more than 100 e-mails. We notified those that won,
                 and we notified those that lost. That was probably the start of our current
                 problem. You see, many of our e-mailers thought that the only place to enter the
                 contest was from posting a message to our message board. They probably felt
                 that way because it is one of the easiest ways to reach us via e-mail. The key
                 phrase here is 'one of the easiest ways to reach us.' But, it is not the only way to
                 e-mail us.

                 When people received a message from us thanking them for trying to win and
                 informing them that they were not among the first 100, we became a target, much
                 like Colin was last week. Some of the comments were not nice. Some really hurt.
                 None were taken lightly or ignored.

                 I figured the best way to deal with the charges levied against us by those thinking
                 we did something wrong, was to try to articulate the happenings through the
                 words of both a winner and a non-winner. I've also included my responses to all
                 involved. I hope it is satisfactory to everyone and removes any doubt as to our
                 respect for John and Jerry, all of our our associates, all contestants and all of our
                 website visitors.

                 Here is an excerpt from an e-mail sent to me by a winner:

              Insidetheropes.com has violated my privacy and trust by distributing my email
                 name to people outside of your organization (I recognize that this was
                 probably not intended). Because of my email name going out to others (whom
                 I do not know), I am getting Spam/garbage sent to me (see
                 email below, and I know that you received it too). (Whether the content is true
                 -- it's not -- is irrelevant. My email address should be respected and
                 protected.)

                 Use the "bcc" (not "cc") feature to send out broadcasts and keep email
                 addresses private.

                 I will probably post this on my website. Please respond so that I will be giving
                 you a fair shake.

                 My response follows:

               You are absolutely right. We have gone about giving away hats with the greatest
                 intentions, but made a couple of mistakes. They were made for the right reasons,
                 of course, but they were mistakes nonetheless. We have apologized to all
                 concerned.
                 Hats are inserted into an envelop
                 In our haste to quickly respond to winners/losers in our recent giveaway, we sent
                 e-mails to those that won/lost and made the mistake of sending them to everyone
                 as a CC (copy) rather than a BCC (blind copy).

                 That is only one problem that we have had to endure as a result of the giveaway,
                 in which you were a winner. Additional problems came about because some
                 people believed that in order to win, they must do so by posting a message to our
                 message board. The realization that you could go to the Contact Us area, or
                 many other areas to enter the giveaway, was not realized. Never on the
                 broadcast did we ever mention that you must enter by using our message board
                 because that was not our intent. We simply said the first 100 people to log on
                 and send us an e-mail would be winners.

                 When people went to the message board, they counted where they were on the
                 posted messages and assumed they had been scammed when they received an
                 e-mail stating they had, unfortunately, not won.

                 That, to them meant that the innocent hosts, John Dennis and Jerry Callahan, and
                 yours truly, became open targets for people to vent their frustrations as to how
                 they felt they had been HAD. I understood their misunderstandings, and have
                 replied as follows:

                 Subject: EXPLANATION AS TO WHY YOU DIDN'T WIN

                 Dear insidetheropes.com Visitor,

                 Hello,

                 I understand your confusion relative to why you didn't win a hat. The problem is
                 that all responses do not come to us from the message board. There are many
                 ways to contact us via our website, and you don't have to post a message to do
                 so. Obviously, if your thinking is that that is the only way to reach us and/or enter
                 our contest, then you might understandably be upset when you count messages
                 and see that you are within 100. But, you are ignoring the many more entries we
                 got via replies and e-mails that are not posted.

                 While many choose to use the message board, many more use other means, like
                 the Contact Us area, etc. The assumption by many, was that you must post to
                 our message board to win - we never said that. We simply said the first 100
                 people to log on to our site and e-mail us would win a hat. We did it twice, first,
                 on Friday for the Dennis and Callahan show, and again on Sunday, on the John
                 Dennis Golf Show. Tomorrow (Thursday) we will be mailing out the hats to the
                 100 winners from the Dennis and Callahan show, and the Golf Show winners will
                 have their hats sent out early next week.

                 I apologize for not responding earlier, however, the Ryder Cup has had our
                 attention. I hope you understand the problem and realize that I take the
                 complaints personally. I have long labored for the site we present to the public,
                 and enjoy a wonderful respect for the level of integrity of all those associated with
                 insidetheropes.com that has helped get us to the point we are at presently.

                 That being said, since you have taken the time and effort to respond once again,
                 please forward your complete mailing address to me so I can get you a hat
                 anyway. I sincerely apologize for the confusion. I understand it.

                 BE SURE TO SEE OUR FEATURE STORY ON PAGE ONE TODAY
                 (THURSDAY) THROUGH SUNDAY.

                 Thanks for your concern.

                 All the best,
                 Tom Auclair, Editor-in-Chief
                 insidetheropes.com

                 I guess I didn't have to post this as an open letter to our visitors and do what
                 others may consider to be a "waste" of our feature story area for a few days, but,
                 the bottom line is that our integrity, and the feelings of our visitors, are very
                 important to all concerned with insidetheropes.com

                 The only mistake we made was to "CC" winners and losers, rather than "BCC"
                 them. We have send at least one apology directly to everyone involved, both
                 winners and losers. That is not where the criticism stopped, though. We even had
                 one e-mail that read - 

              "what I found interesting was the several guys standing next to me on the 
                 15th green yesterday at TCC wearing those hats and my wondering how they 
                 ever got them so fast????

               oh well

                 this episode does not reflect well on Dennis, we already know that Callahan 
                 is as shallow as a puddle, I just would have expected better from Dennis 
                 than this kind of shilling"

                 The simple explanation here is, my son and I handed out nearly one-hundred hats
                 to people attending the Ryder Cup on Sunday. It makes a great case study, I am
                 sure on how quickly someone can get slammed for something they do on a
                 website. And, in the instances where someone is ripping someone else off, that's
                 a good thing. However, in the instance where someone is trying to respond to
                 winners and losers as quickly as possible, it is unfortunate.

                 I feel badly that anyone had ill-feeling toward John Dennis and Jerry Callahan,
                 suggesting that they may have inadvertently, or otherwise, been party to a
                 scam/fraud. In an effort to reward listeners of their show, and certainly get those
                 listeners to our website, we have been slammed. Our expert staff, from our Chief
                 Technical Officer, our vice-president of Internet Operations, the staff operating
                 our golf superstore, to all of our readers and listeners, not just in Boston, but
                 around the country and indeed around the world, deserve much better.

                 I have long believed that in every bad situation there is some good to be learned,
                 if one wants to see it. Well, after enduring the wrath of displeased visitors that
                 may have felt wronged, but in fact were not, I do see the good in it all. Together,
                 we have all learned more than we knew last week. Whether it be how not to be
                 so quick to judge someone or something without having all of the facts, or, how
                 quickly a reputation can be impugned even if for wrong reasons and false
                 accusations, and many more lessons that probably have already been outlined.

                 My reaction as Editor-in-Chief of insidetheropes.com was not to quickly remove
                 the messages that attacked us, but rather, to deal with it head-on. The hope is,
                 that with the facts known, those choosing to criticize us would be as willing to
                 recognize our having totally followed through on all representations made. We do
                 accept fault for the e-mails that were improperly sent, and hope all appreciate
                 that the correction was made immediately, and that includes this message.

                 We at insidetheropes.com are so happy to have every one of our visitors, not
                 once, but hopefully many times per week. Hopefully, this will serve as a proof of
                 our desire to provide the best to them, in good times and in bad.

                 In closing, I apologize for any misunderstanding that I may have generated. Also,
                 I have asked for the mailing address from each individual that slammed us
                 because I understand how they became confused and felt cheated. They felt they
                 had won something, and when they were told something to the contrary, they got
                 upset. I only hope they accept the gift, but as importantly, stop for a second
                 before slamming someone and at least allow them to respond. 

                 I wish you and all concerned the very best that life has to give. I hope that
                 includes frequent stops at insidetheropes.com

                 All the best,
                 Tom Auclair, Editor-in-Chief
                 insidetheropes.com