Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fw: Eco Safe @ Arbico-Organics

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

Robert Heinich of Eno Commons Cohousing asked:
> Does anyone know anything about Arbico-Organics?

Another subscriber wrote to me off-list asking if a near identical message
from the Arbico-Organics company was Spam and pondering whether it was
appropriate that this compang had gotten email addresses from "Marjory" :

The suspect letter stated:
> I received a call and order from Marjorie at the Sante Fe Cohousing
> location and she gave me some info and a link... that's how I found you.
> She told me a little about cohousing and what was going on, WOW, I had
> no idea!

So I did a bit of investigation.  I called the "Loree" who 'signed' the
suspect message at the 800 number listed.  Loree answered the phone
(without me having to supply the "#120" listed).  She seemed to be a
pleasant woman but claimed to be oblivious to how close to (if not
actually being) the sender of Spam she was.

She claimed that she did not remember who the Marjorie was exactly since
it had been some time since her contact.  She did not remember which
community in Santa Fe but hinted that it might be Commons on the Alameda
(the only completed community there).

She said she was sending her message individually to the address listed in
the list of communities at http://www.cohousing.org after looking at their
web pages. Sometimes with comments specific to the community if she had
comments about what she read on their web pages.

I tried to convince Loree that her mail was at least very close to being
spam and was making some people suspicious if not annoyed and urged her to
reconsider her approach.  Collecting addresses from the web and sending
unsolicited advertising is the essence of spam.  She did claim several
people who she had contacted appreciated knowing of her bsns.

The only way I can think of to determine if her messages are being sent
individually is to collect dated messages from several recipients and
compare dates.  If anyone cares to send such (heading only would suffice)
to me OFF-LIST, I'd make the comparison.

So my best guess is that this company may be legit but somewhat misguided
in their approach to seeking new customers.

Note that I found no direct connection to the cohousing-L mailing list
as being the source of addresses. Note that the mailing list protects
addresses by obscuring them in the archives and does not release the
subscriber list.

Fred, listserv manager

-- 
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
Communications for Justice - My new listserv org.       UU, Linux
My Link Page: http://fholson.cohousing.org       Ham radio:WB0YQM
fholson at cohousing.org   612-588-9532   (7am-10pm Central time)