A reader, well actually he probably isn't, writes:
From: "japan-best.com webmaster" <postmaster@japan-best.com>
Date: Mon, 07 May 2012 22:27:24 +0900
To: dan@dansdata.com
Subject: Inclusion in one of your articlesDear Dan
I am Marc with japan-best.com
i read your article here
http://www.dansdata.com/contact.html
and would like the possibility of include my site in it.
I have also took note of yOur paypal adress :-)You can check us here :
japan-best.com <http://japan-best.com/en/>I am looking forward to hearing from you and discuss that further
Have a great day
Regards
Marc
Marc, buddy, your Spam-O-Matic might need a little recalibration, there.
My contact-and-donation pages may score surprisingly high for various panhandling Google searches, but that doesn't mean it'd be a good place for you to advertise your site full of allegedly Japanese merchandise.
Including, I now see, some front-page items whose description does not match their pictures.
At first glance, Japan-Best looks like a valid online store, but the more things I click on, the more I think it may actually be a 100%-machine-built lazy-dropshipper paradise. Or, conceivably, just a fancy way of stealing credit card numbers.
Or maybe it's legit, if clumsy, but massively overpriced. Look at this hideous wristwatch, for instance; from Japan-Best, including shipping, it costs twice as much as the same item on eBay.
Between eBay and legit dealers like HobbyLink Japan, I don't think there's much reason for anybody to buy stuff from weird machine-made sites like Japan-Best. But I'm sure a little PayPal baksheesh to get some crafty links inserted in random high-PageRanked Web pages will turn that right around for you, Marc!
UPDATE: Marc quickly replied in the comments below. Then, more than six months later, he decided to e-mail me this:
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:30:50 +0900
From: "japan-best.com " <postmaster@japan-best.com>
To: dan@dansdata.com
Subject: remove private infosjapan-best.com here,
Say what you want about the website.
but remove the email adress from the article, you have no right to do that.
So apparently the postmaster@domain address is sooper sekrit private information now. I learn something every day!
This on top of the strangely popular idea among Internet ne'er-do-wells - which is the only reason I'm bothering to add this update to the post - that there's something confidential about e-mail you send to strangers.
It might be polite to not publish the reply address as well as the rest of an unsolicited commercial e-mail from a stranger, but "rights" don't come into it. Well, unless there's some nutty Net-privacy law where the complainant and/or "culprit" live that forbids disclosing such information without consent.
Failing that, there is no more reasonable expectation of privacy of your return address when you send an e-mail to a stranger than there is of your phone number if you telephone a stranger who has Caller ID. People you annoy on the Internet have no legal obligation to keep your identity secret.
And if your address is one of the standard addresses you should expect to find on any mail server...
So I reckon I'll leave it as it is, Marc. Your move, genius.
11 May 2012 at 11:54 am
Dear Dan.
I am Marc from japan-best.com
I think there has been like a slight misunderstanding.
Indeed I have used your "contact-and-donation pages" to contact you.
But this is the purpose of a "contact page"right, or did I miss something ?
You say I am spammer, but did you understand my mail?
Is that spam??
Is contacting you using your "contact page", offering you a partnership and leaving you my email adress SPAM?
I ll tell you what spam is. Spam is using automation softwares, spam is leaving dull and robotic comments on any page possible and leave the URL of a website.
Please tell me: is this what I have done?
Regarding your comments on the website. would you have looked a bit more you would have noticed that the error in the title of the Johnny Depp toy was in one language ONLY (out of 5),
you could as well have compared those 2 products:
http://japan-best.com/en/purchase-g-shock-from-japan/18192-casio-g-shock-standard-ga-110c-1ajf-men.html
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=GA-110C-1AJF&_sacat=See-All-Categories
but you choose otherwise. So that you could make your case, and accuse us of being a scam and thefts.
""...Or, conceivably, just a fancy way of stealing credit card numbers...""
Pardon me?
What gives you the right to say that? because there is a mistake in a title? we carry more than 120 000 LEGIT , JAPANESE goods Sir, and sometimes, yes, there can be mistakes in titles.
But again, we are human after all. We make mistakes.
And we are very pleased when our customers make us notice about them. We correct them.
So thanks for the tip, but that does not give you the right to libel our business.
Generally, when we contact webmasters to try to establish a meaningful partnership they just answer normally and politely.
Have a good day sir
Marc
japan-best.com
11 May 2012 at 4:24 pm
Yes. It's unsolicited, it's commercial, it's e-mail, it's spam.
...unlike the carefully hand-crafted message you sent in which you offered me money to link to your store from the "article" in which I tell people how they can contact me, or send me money. Roger that.
Forgive me for not poring through your site to exhaustively survey the number of correct versus incorrect product discriptions. I clicked two things on the front page, both were wrong.
Watch from you, $193.22 delivered. Watch from 100%-positive-feedback eBay seller, $186.99 delivered.
Congratulations on not being as overpriced as you were last time!
On poking around some more, I found you actually seem to be cheaper than eBay for this watch. It's odd that your encyclopedic knowledge of your entirely-not-machine-generated line of goods didn't lead you to use this as your example instead.
OK, OK, you're a real store. Your real store just looks worse than most fake pharmacy sites.
This "kitchen" subcategory page is titled "Buy Used Japanese cuisine". Perhaps fortunately, it contains no products.
This "Decoration" subcategory is titled "specialist online store of Japanese chopsticks", but all anyone can buy there is a couple of different values of prepaid cards for iTunes Japan. Which seemed to have only a slight mark-up, until I noticed that you charge $US22.43 to ship them.
You've also got an "Electronics" category, extensively subdivided into subcategories, none of which contain anything.
You also have product categories that do contain things, but from poking around randomly I find myself seriously suspecting that these categories make up less than half of your store.
These guys are certifiably insane, and their store is way better than yours. And, analogously, I think anybody who buys anything from you that they could get from Hobbylink Japan and/or eBay should be gently but firmly restrained for their own protection.
Stop getting all pissy because I'm mystified by your train-wreck of a Web site and fix the site, or find a new line of work. And stop sending people e-mails which I am now quite willing to believe you typed with your own two hands, yet managed to make sound every bit as dumb as standard robot-spam.
11 May 2012 at 5:57 pm
Dear Dan,
YOu say 22.43$ for shipping of itunes cards.
It is not!
the price is 2.24 as clearly stated her
http://japan-best.com/en/quick-order
Now, I would recommend you gently but firmly stop libelling us.
Or we will see would will the dumbest sir.
Regards
11 May 2012 at 9:32 pm
I added one to my cart. I clicked "checkout". That's what it said.
Perhaps it said that because I had previously added, and then removed, other items from the cart.
If it did, then your shopping-cart software is defective. If it didn't, I'm not about to actually try to pay you for an order and see if it really costs what your site clearly said it does.
11 May 2012 at 6:35 pm
You can call our website crappy if you feel like.
But that does not give the right to call us thefts and insult our customers publicly.
Regards
Marc
12 May 2012 at 9:38 am
Marc-
Your grammar is decidedly substandard, and I trust you as far as I can comfortably spit an average sized wharf rat.
Up your nose, with a rubber hose!
-Mister Peepers.
12 May 2012 at 10:56 am
I would like to thank Marc! If Dan hadn't linked to this page, I wouldn't have discovered my old comments. I'd forgotten completely about that bot.
It's very tempting to resurrect ALICE and compare its discourse with Marc's, but that might be going a bit far in the big Exam Procrastination Festival.