Vineyard Vines Hacked by Own IT Department

STAMFORD CT —AP—   A new type of Internet piracy has emerged in the growing battle between major retailers and hackers, as it was revealed that Vineyard Vines had been hacked by its own internal IT Department.

The vandals attacked through the marketing and customer service channels, thereby thwarting the usual SQL injection, phishing, spoofing and internal networking protection set up by many of the same people. The plan was unleashed on Cyber Monday with a flurry of e-mail reminders that caught the eye of at least one weary digital shopper, H Ted Bahr, 56, of Laurel Hollow, NY.  “I though it was a Denial of Service (DoS) attack….in reverse! I was getting hit with e-mail offers for ‘20% off on purchases over $200,’ about once every two hours.”

The crafty hackers never counted on what Bahr would do next; “I painfully said, ‘enough,’ and tried to unsubscribe from their mailings. It was there, on the e-mail preferences page, that I reached a bizarre presentation of unintelligible options written in the kind of language only an IT geek could love – or understand.”  In the “Subscription Center,” Bahr learned that he was subscribed to “Available Publications” like the 20141025_20141026 Wovens (auto-generated list), the 20141026 SUPRESS (suppress), but not subscribed to the Whale Rep VV Email (Whale Rep VV Email).

“What?! We are supposed to be about living the good life, not harassing and confusing customers with user-nasty, IT-driven gibberish,” exclaimed Shep Murray, CEO and co-founder of Vineyard Vines, “we’ve been HACKED!” Murray immediately called a meeting with his brother and Vineyard Vines co-founder Ian Murray, VP of Brand Communications Lindsey Worster, and Director of e-Commerce Stephanie Lynn. It quickly became apparent that nobody in the marketing department was aware that the IT department had taken it upon itself to manage the customer service experience without any input from marketers, customers, or real humans who might have pointed out the stone-faced, auto-generated, user-confusing experience.

The plot further unraveled when customer Bahr tried to point these things out to the company through its comment engine which allowed Bahr to ramble on and on until, when he submitted, cruelly informed him after the fact that he only had 500 characters, including spaces. The stone-age system, provided in part by SalesForce’s “Marketing Cloud” software, did not helpfully count the characters as Bahr typed along as has been the case with modern websites for 6 years or more. Bahr wearily cut and pasted his comments into Word, used the Word tools to get a count, edited and then cut and pasted back into the comment engine, putting the exclamation point on the entire customer experience.

“If it had been the ‘3-days before Christmas 40% off,’ sale with free shipping that I know they will offer on December 22, it might not have been so offensive to receive 5 EMAILS IN ONE DAY, but as any VV customer knows, 20% off for $200 or more is about the crappiest offer they’ve ever presented. But otherwise, I would never have discovered the hack,” concluded Bahr.

Hello Vineyard Vines,

This is a satirical presentation of a true story. 5 emails in one day. Really?  The rest of the customer experience is as presented – terrible and strange. To unsubscribe from all e-mail I instead unsubscribe to “all publications.” What publications?, I just can’t take 5 emails in one day (again, for a crappy offer, by your standards). Yes yes I know that 20141025 is a date range. I have an IT department  and guess what? They have loved to go ahead and take it on themselves to just write copy for these sorts of transactional pages without checking with anyone in marketing because it just seems so much quicker that way. But, they don’t think or communicate like us. That’s why they’re in IT. Get control.

Another suggestion. I was desperate for a “just slow down the e-mails” option. I love your offers and sometimes respond to them. But enough was enough. Many companies offer a “slow down the e-mails” option but with you it was all or nothing. A lot to implement, I know, but worth considering.

Anyway, that’s my story and I offer it to you because I like your products and consider myself a loyal customer.  Thanks for listening.