Winning the Battle… at a small price
A few months ago I wrote about The Ongoing Battle Against SPAM. At the time I was mildly perturbed about the time I was wasting dealing with spam, but in September I noticed a sharp increase, to the point where it was taking about 10 minutes to download my messages in the morning. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I noticed that some of the people I know were using Spam Arrest, so I decided to sign up for their 30 day free trial. I figured that would at least get me through my vacation at the end of September, so I wouldn’t be returning to 1000+ spam messages. It didn’t take me long to see the value of the service and to recognize that it is well worth its price - which is less than $50 per year. It will clearly pay for itself, as the time I’m not spending monitoring my junk mail can now be spent on client projects or marketing activities. In addition, my brain isn’t being inundated with multiple messages that I really don’t care to see.
The way Spam Arrest works, you upload your contacts so any messages from these people will automatically be approved. If anyone else sends you an email, they’ll be sent an automatic reply to which they must respond before their messages will be delivered to you. They will then be added to the "approved" list. As most spam is sent out by automated systems which are unable to deal with this request, only messages sent by actual human beings will go through. I have received a couple of messages which I considered spam, but I’m able to log into my account and block the senders from sending me any further emails.
As part of my weekly routine, I export my Outlook contacts to a CSV file, then import it into Spam Arrest to ensure that any new contacts I’ve added do not have to go through the verification process. This also provides me with a backup copy of my contacts. As an added benefit, I can use the same CSV file to find people I know on social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.
I had been a loyal and paying customer of Spamarrest for some time, recently their service has been erratic and I lost a number of important messages. After not receiving adequate support I decided to cancel my recently renewed account and asked for a refund of the unused portion. Here is their response:
Hi David,
Thanks once again.
David, I am very sorry to tell you that we are not able to offer you a refund for your account. You may continue to use your Spam Arrest account till 2008-10-01 by reactivating the account.
I truly apologize for your inconvenience, David. Please do let me know if you need anything else.
Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest
Comment by David — December 5, 2007 @ 8:00 pm