-By Warner Todd Huston
An OfficeMax stationary store in suburban Chicago has courted controversy and raised questions of consumer privacy by sending a direct mail flyer to the home of a man whose daughter was killed in a car accident addressing the mail to the resident and “Daughter Killed in Car Crash Or Current Business.”
The mail was sent to the home of Antioch resident Mike Seay whose 17-year-old daughter, Ashley, was killed in a car accident in April of 2013.
Seay said he thinks of his lost daughter every day, but when that OfficeMax coupon came in the mail addressed like that he was shocked and outraged.
“Why would they have that type of information? Why would they need that?” Seay told Chicago’s NBC affiliate. “What purpose does it serve anybody to know that? And how much other types of other information do they have if they have that on me, or anyone else? And how do they use that, what do they use that for?”
The bereaved father initially asked his Facebook friends what to do about the situation and eventually decided to call the OfficeMax call center where he was met with incredulity by the call center supervisor.
But eventually the OfficeMax representative came to believe the man.
In the end the company came to blame a third party direct mail contractor. The company also issued a statement.
“We are deeply sorry that Mr. Seay and his family received this mailing from us, and we are reaching out to Mr. Seay to convey our sincerest apologies on this unfortunate matter. This mailing is a result of a mailing list rented through a third-party provider. We have reached out to the third-party mailing list provider to research what happened. Based on a preliminary investigation today we believe this to be an inadvertent error; and we are continuing the investigation,” OfficeMax spokesperson Nicole Miller said in the statement.
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Follow Warner Todd Huston on:
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.