It’s been a long time since I’ve seen complete mindless determination in the face of utterly overwhelming odds, but Satellite Direct have shown a lack of comprehension that is quite staggering in their recent marketing campaign. Today, they have raised the bar of ineptitude.

The Odds against Satellite Direct

The odds stacked up against Satellite Direct are not just high, they’re positively gargantuanly mind-bogglingly insurmountable; but this plucky little company won’t give up.

Satellite Direct want to sell us a warranty for our Sky satellite television receiver and they don’t give a stuff that we don’t own one.

It matters not a jot to them that we’ve never had one – why let a trifling little detail like that get in the way of a good marketing opportunity?

Disregarding Things

If you’re disregarding important things like checking that your victims potential customers have a need for your warranty then a few other forgetful moments won’t go amiss either, like forgetting to check if your victims potential customers are registered with the TPS.

We for example are registered with the TPS, so it’s unlawful, for Satellite Direct to call us and even try to sell us anything, but that’s not stopped them calling us twice (1,2) already, and comments are starting to arrive from others who have also been tele-spammed.

Satellite Direct Junk Mail

So if your tele-marking operations were facing repeated TPS complaints, what do you do?

Well I was most impressed today to hear from John Campbell whose 96 year old mum-in-law received a letter from Satellite Direct informing her that she too had an expired warranty on a Sky satellite receiver which has (like ours) never, ever, existed.

So that’s what Satellite Direct do, they switch to junk mail. We’re also registered with the Mailing Preference Service, so it’s also unlawful for Satellite Direct to directly send us junk mail.

It will therefore come as no surprise that we too have received a letter from Satellite Direct UK which opens:

The initial manufacturer’s warranty on your digital satellite (Sky TV) system has now expired and this leaves you open to expensive call out charges and repair costs should anything go wrong!

Profiting from Dishonesty?

If Satellite Direct can repeatedly badger us with this specious nonsense about the expiry of a warranty on a device which has never existed, then we must question how many real Sky customers are buying unnecessary warranties on machines that are still covered perfectly well by the original warranty?

Add todays letter to the call I received earlier this year telling me I’d won a flight to Turkey thanks to Data Partnership Solutions and One4Travel – which work in partnership with Satellite Direct UK and that makes four occasions when they’ve ignored the TPS and MPS and contacted us, then attempted to mislead us.

Countrywide that could scale up to a lot of unsolicited and unlawful telephone calls and junk mails, and a lot of unhappy customers.

---

Update: Satellite Direct UK’s business practices have subsequently been successfully challenged in the High Court by BSkyB.

---

Update: Someone claiming to be an employee responds.