Barnes & Noble bought Borders customer lists: chance to opt-out
Thanks to Lady Galaxy, one of my regular readers and commenters, for the heads-up on this story!
I’ve written before about the Borders bankruptcy…even documented it with a few pictures.
My local Borders? It’s currently a Spirit Halloween store.
Hmmm…Halloween…
Remember Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space*? These aliens decide to take over Earth by reanimating innocent (albeit creepy looking) people into the undead? You know Tor Johnson would never have done anything bad, except for that whole “turned into a zombie thing”…you could tell just by looking at that sweet face. 
Gee, if only there’s been an opt-out program for zombification…
Well, for all of you Borders Rewards members whose accounts were “killed” by the bankruptcy, Barnes & Noble also wants to take over the world…er, increase their marketshare, by reanimating you!
In this letter from Barnes & Noble:
Important Information Regarding Your Borders Account
CEO William Lynch lets you know how sorry he is that your Borders closed…and that they’ve bought your account.
It’s a nicely written letter…a far cry from some of their other communications, and I honestly applaud them for that change.
You can opt out of having your account transferred…you have to do it by November 2, 2011, and you do that here:
http://ebm.cheetahmail.com/r/regf2?a=0&aid=266639891&n=100
If you don’t opt out, you have a free B&N account…until January 31, 2012 (about three months). After that, presumably, it’s $25 a year (which is the normal amount for B&N’s members.
It’s interesting to me that I haven’t gotten this e-mail yet. I’m a Borders member…I’m assuming it just isn’t here yet. Lady Galaxy commented that it came on Friday, October 14.
I wanted to alert you with this post, though…I figured you might miss an e-mail (and I suppose it could go to your spam folder or some such).
Will I opt out?
No, probably not. I don’t dislike Barnes & Noble…I have had good experiences in their stores, although my experience online hasn’t been as satisfying..
We’re already Barnes & Noble members…my kid is in college, and the B&N campus store is really the only game around. The discount there helps.
One other thing: I did check the story. I found it in a number of news sources, but I wanted to make sure the URL (Uniform Resource Locator…web address) I had wasn’t spoofed (a fake of a website, often to gather people’s personal data). I used Google to search the B&N site, and it found the letter, which convinces me.
* If you are familiar with Plan Nine, you may find my Kindle-related parody interesting:
Update: it occurred to me later that I probably one get an e-mail…since we are already Barnes & Noble members. No reason to appeal to me to join.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
October 17, 2011 at 4:04 pm |
What’s interesting to me is that i’ve gotten two emails from B&N about this, and neither of them said anything about a B&N account costing anything…
October 17, 2011 at 9:38 pm |
You’re welcome! And thank you for checking out the legitimacy of the e-mail for me. Are you by any chance a fan of the Funky Winkerbean comic strip? Last week, they did a sort of tribute to the passing of the locally book stores. I follow it online. It starts here
http://www.seattlepi.com/comics-and-games/fun/Funky_Winkerbean/2011-10-10/
and follows through to Saturday. If you don’t want to publish this reply because of the link, that’s OK. Just thought it was something you might find interesting.
October 18, 2011 at 9:41 am |
1. We recieved one notifications (my wife had one account / I had a different account. She recieved her email 8 days ago – I recieved mine 5 days ago. We are both members of Barnes and Nobles Membership Plan
2. For what it’s worth – I had a very unpleasant experience with Barnes & Nobles customer service. All about a pre-order. Amazon – 1. Barnes & Noble – 0!
October 18, 2011 at 12:19 pm |
Thanks for writing, Richard!
Interesting…I guess it’s not that, then.
Maybe they just don’t like me…or maybe they like me so much, they don’t want to give me a chance to opt out. 