As you might have seen, I thanked Woodcraft for landing me on a Woodworkers Guild of America junk mail mailing list.
If you search around woodworking sites and forums, you’ll see a LOT of hostility aimed at the Woodworkers Guild of America for their practice of sending unsolicited DVDs and follow-ups urging recipients to pay for or return DVDs that are typically already discarded.
WWGOA is not the only company sending out junk mail to woodworkers, but they’re the ones you’ll see complained about most.
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Woodcraft assured me that they do not rent or sell customers’ names and addresses to the WWGOA [directly].
But, as per their privacy policy, they do provide [sell/rent] mailing lists to third party companies, potentially to the marketing company that resells or supplies such information to the Woodworkers Guild of America.
Here are the policies of the woodworking companies I have ordered from in the past. Of the four companies, Lee Valley is the only one that has a policy of NOT renting or selling mailing lists to third party companies.
The only way to stop these automatic opt-in mailing list practices is by telling these companies how you feel.
Woodcraft
We occasionally make our customer list (postal mailing list only) available to carefully screened companies whose products may interest you.
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Contact [email protected] to opt-out.
Rockler
Occasionally, we make a portion of our mailing list available to respectable organizations that may interest our customers.
Contact [email protected] to opt-out.
MLCS
From time to time, we may share your name and address with other companies who can offer products and services that may be of interest to you as a woodworker.
Contact [email protected] to opt-out.
Lee Valley
Please note that we do not rent out our customer names. You will not receive mail from others as a result of buying from us.
Karl
Just one more reason to like Lee Valley.
John Blair
I call BS on Woodcraft. If a purchase comes with a free 2 month “membership” and there is no way to opt out without emailing them, their system is designed to make money selling your information.
If it added the 2 month membership to your cart and you could change quantity to 0 or delete it, then I might believe them. For now, I will not order from them online.
Chris
Being from Canada I usually stick to Lee Valley anyway, but from now on they are the only one I’ll order from.
Joshua Latham
Thank You Lee Valley. One more reason to buy from them. Great products and ethics.
CB
This is very timely. I just received some junk snail mail associated with Rockler peddling magazine subscriptions.
I have to say I never get any kind of junk snail mail associated with any other kind purchases (non woodworking) delivered to my address. Spam email? Yes I do receive it but it hasn’t been so terrible or common and easy to manage.
Maybe woodworking shops are just old school and perhaps behind the times in guerrilla 3rd party marketing?
Either way it’s time to contact Rockler and tell them to stop.