Winning t-shirts and school assignments

I got an email that I won an oDesk t-shirt for May's buzz, thanking me for the first post I put up about it. I should receive it in a few days. I absolutely love this company!

On another note, one of my assignments was about customer lists that businesses keep. A few of us in the class discussion commented about how we hate getting swamped with emails, phone calls and letters from companies we have no interest in because we did business with a company they are affiliated with.

It led me to ask why a company would shoot themselves in the foot, as it were, by 1.) selling their customer lists to the highest bidder (usually a competitor) and 2.) annoying consumers enough to stop being your customer when they trace it back to when you made them give their personal info just to get a detailed product description of something they probably never bought anyway. It seriously begs the question.

I understand the need for customers to market to, but a company should ask their permission first, not coerce them or put it in the middle of 'legal jargon fine print' that they'd never see. In my opinion, customer lists should go under the catagory of a trade secret and not given out at all. If a company wants customers, they can work for them like everybody else and not take the lazy way about it.

Sorry for the rant...as much as I love it, there are just certain aspects about business and marketing that bug the crap out of me.