Borders Archive

Last week bankrupt book seller Borders announced that they had agreed to sell their intellectual property to rival Barnes & Noble. The big part of the sale of the intellectual property is the Borders email list. No terms of the sale were disclosed but the email list alone contains the contact information for 48 million customers.

Tiffany Kary at Businessweek notes that Barnes & Noble will run an ad campaign in newspapers to alert customers that they have until October 15, 2011 to opt-out — otherwise their contact information (even if you selected not to share the info) will be transferred to Barnes & Noble.

Today Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch began emailing customers to let them know of the intellectual property and customer data sale from Borders. The email, which I’ve partially included below, notes that you have until October 15, 2011 to opt-out from the data transfer.

If you want to opt-out of the data transfer, visit this site, ignore the sales pitches and make sure to click the confirmation link. For some reason, B&N feels it necessary to send you an email to confirm that you want to actually be unsubscribed and opt-out from the data transfer.

Based on the marketing messages in both the email and on their opt-out site, I am assuming you will get a bunch of emails once the data transfer takes place.

Continue reading “Bankrupt Borders Sells Your Customer Data to Barnes & Noble (Opt-Out Offered)” »