quizfactor.com - right of reply

Further to my last email, I have received a reply to my email over my concerns about this site. In the interests of fairness I post it here in its entirety, so you can all make your own minds up about it.

"Hi Dave,

Thanks for your time looking at our site and for your considered replies.

I have passed your emails onto our creative and management teams to look at as you've raised some very valid points regarding data capture and how that data is used. Quite simply we ask site visitors their details for 2 reasons; firstly to get them signed up and coming back to play regularly - I'm sure you'll know yourself that there are many quiz websites out there that are not well constructed and have no returning visitor value, they just play a couple of quizzes, leave and don't come back. We have a popular 'leaderboard' function where users store their scores and can compete against their friends, share these results on Twitter and Facebook etc, this all promotes a more interactive web experience. Secondly, unlike many quiz sites we offer great prizes to our visitors, take a look at them here - http://www.quizfactor.com/prizes - we need to know where to send the prizes!

As I explained we are a very young site that are actually still operating in beta mode, so we are very open to suggestions, criticisms and making improvements to address these issues. I'm sure you understand that as part of the marketing side of things I have very little input in how the website content is put together, my job is just to get it being talked about, listed, linked to etc.

I hope you don't genuinely think that I was trying to act dishonestly as I can assure this is not the case - I was simply enquiring as to whether you'd be interested in linking our site up to yours. I feel that phrases like 'good try' and 'be fair' are frankly wide of the mark.

Naturally it is your right to do some research on QuizFactor and decide whether or not to recommend us to your visitors, and we take no offence in your rejection.

Many thanks,
Poppy
QuizFactor

On 5 July 2011 21:46, David Clark wrote:

Hello Poppy

With regards to my last email, rather than wait for your reply, I think I've just found out the answer to my questions for myself. I googled to find out who owns the domain name quizfactor.com. Apparently it is IPT Ltd - who say this on their own website : -
"IPT Data Rental
With over 3 million unique opt-in email addresses, over 7.3 million household postal addresses, 1.4 million landline telephone numbers, 1.7 million validated SMS numbers and 900 demographic / lifestyle selections, IPT can help you define and reach your target audience."



Now I know eactly why you want all that information on your joining up page. Naughty , naughty ! To be honest it is pretty much exactly what I feared in the first place. Be fair, Poppy, I won Mastermind and so I'm not totally stupid !



Full marks for trying to get in through the back door as it were. To use a cricketing analogy a good stroke, but you've been caught on the boundary.



Look, Poppy, it works like this. This is the business that you are in, and you have to do what you have to do, I appreciate that. But its not the business that I am in, and I'm afraid that I don't want any part of this. When I started LAM ( probably one of the most popular blog devoted to quizzing in the UK, not that I like to brag you understand ) I made a conscious decision that I wasn't going to use my and other people's love of quizzing as a commercial opportunity for myself. I have no intention of aiding anyone else to do it. I have to say, though , I do take my hat off to you. Not only going in through the back door by using enthusiast generated sites with good word of mouth like mine, but ones which would do it for free as well. Like I say, I take my hat off to you for trying.



So sorry, that's a no. IPT Ltd. will get no help from my blog or my website. ( - unless we're talking ridiculous amounts of cash - joke ! - ) There are probably quite a few places where you can reach your target group if you pay the going rate - good luck with that. No hard feelings though, and well done on a good try.



Best regards



Dave C."

I wrote a short email back, explaining that I don't call them dishonest, but I do think that they have not been transparent or even open. As always, feel free to disagree, but this is still very much a site which I would give a wide berth to.