While I don’t want to spend too much time on the topic, here’s a quick little post explaining why I would never ever buy a car from the MINI of Peabody dealership.

I’ve had a gmail address for a long time — I got it back when gmail was invite-only, in fact. Shortly after signing up for gmail I began getting spam e-mails from a Mini Cooper car dealership located in Peabody, Massachusetts named Mini of Peabody. Just to be clear: I have no interest in Mini Coopers, have never owned one, never plan to, and never signed up for Mini of Peabody’s e-mail newsletter.

The monthly e-mails from Mini of Peabody are big and colorful and hard to miss. I deleted the first one and the second one and the third one. The e-mails suggested that I add sales@minipeabody.com to my address book to ensure that I received their e-mails, but instead I did the opposite and added sales@minipeabody.com to my spam list. I also clicked on the “report this e-mail as spam” button in gmail. Still, somehow, the e-mails get through.

Back then I was naive enough to believe that clicking “unsubscribe from this newsletter” worked. It doesn’t, or at least didn’t in this case. I clicked their “unsubscribe” button, followed the weblink, entered my e-mail address to remove it from their mailing list… and still, the newsletters came. I have tried this multiple times.

Now, one thing I would find entirely embarrassing if I were Mini of Peabody is that their newsletters contain multiple spelling errors. The one I have here in front of me contains an offer for their “Aligment Special” (it’s “alignment”), notes that their General Sales Manager’s first sale was a “Camero” (it’s Camaro), and mentions the car’s heated “seates” (seats).

After attempting to contact Mini of Peabody directly through e-mail on multiple occasions, I decided to try a different approach. In the fall of 2013 (yes, seriously) I began posting on Mini of Peabody’s Facebook page and publicly shamed them on Twitter. In October of 2013 I received a direct message from the dealership’s Twitter account (@MiniPeabody) letting me know that s/he would personally see to it that I was removed from the mailing list. I provided them my e-mail address. The very next month, in November of 2013, I got another newsletter from them. I still get them. I got one last month too, and I’m sure I’ll get one next month as well.

Based on that, here is why Why I would never buy a Mini Cooper (or any other car) from MINI of Peabody:

01. They send unsolicited e-mail (spam). Of the tens of thousands of car dealerships across the globe, this is the only one that continually e-mails me. This seems like a desperate way to sell cars to me.

02. They will not stop sending me unsolicited spam. Despite multiple attempts to get Mini of Peabody to stop e-mailing me, they continue. I can only presume this means one of two things: either they have chosen to intentionally continue to e-mail me, or technically they are incapable of no longer e-mailing me. If they have intentionally chosen to continue to e-mail me after I have requested multiple times that they stop, that would make me, as a potential customer, concerned about what other choices or decisions they would make against my wishes in the future. And if they are technically incapable of not e-mailing me, well, that’s pretty scary too. Everything from credit checks to loan applications are processed electronically at car dealerships. If Mini of Peabody can’t manage a simple mailing list, it makes me wonder if they can safely manage my social security number or bank account information!

03. Their newsletters contain multiple typos. When I pre-write one of my blog posts in Google Docs before sending it to WordPress, it gets spell checked three times: once by Google Chrome, once by Google Docs, and once by WordPress — and I’m not even running a business! When a company sends me e-mails with multiple typos in it, to me that seems like a company that doesn’t pay much attention to detail. It also makes me wonder what other parts of their business are they not paying attention to. Running spell check on an e-mail is trivial and free task. If you’re not willing to spend the few seconds it takes to spell check the newsletter that represents your company, it makes me think maybe you are not willing to spend a few extra seconds while working on my car, either. Is it laziness, sloppiness, or a simple lack of caring? I don’t know, but I do know I’m not looking for a car dealership with any of those traits!

04. They do not honor their word. In October of 2013, a representative of Mini of Peabody contacted me personally and said they would remove my e-mail from their mailing list. They didn’t. Again, I can only come up with two possible scenarios: either they cannot stop e-mailing me, or they can. If they cannot (a bizarre possibility), why would they promise me that they would do something they couldn’t do? If I did happen to buy a car from them, what else would they promise me that they could not deliver? And if they can stop e-mailing me, why won’t they? Knowing that a dealership “could” have done something for me but chooses not to would make me steer clear of them for sure.

For these reasons, I would never consider doing business with MINI of Peabody.

MINI of Peabody URL: http://www.minipeabody.com
MINI of Peabody Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miniofpeabody
MINI of Peabody Twitter: https://twitter.com/minipeabody