Sun UK resellers under email siege

Sun Microsystems' hard-pressed UK reseller channel suffered another indignity today, when the company messed up its email group pricertool_external_emea@sun.com, apparently by making it an outside-world addressable alias.

We'll let one reader take up the story:

It all kicked off when Sun sent an email warning of an impending outage to the alias. One person replied with an unsubscribe or remove message, and since then I have received a few hundred similar messages, some quite amusingly irate. One individual has also apparently subscribed the alias to a p0rno list! (Another reader sent us a copy of this particular email.)

I also received the email below (which most idiots seem to have ignored, probably due to them being in sales!), but despite sending a mail to the address listed - suggesting they remove the alias immediately, or failing that, remove me from it - I am still getting the mails, along with presumably hundreds or thousands of others. Fantastic way to advertise your technical competence and keep resellers happy....

I you wish to be removed from this email DO NOT respond to pricertool_external_emea@sun.com.

******
Respond to Me
*********************
(Name deleted)
*********************
Please do not fill up other people's email boxes. This alias is for the pricertool application to notify users of outages or changes.

Regards
Sun Microsystems Inc
IT Application Support - Sales and Marketing

So why are Sun's UK dealers hard-pressed?

We have a copy of one email from the pricertool_external_emea@sun.com group holding two attached files which are, we suppose, notifying resellers of change. These contain scans of two hard-hitting articles from Microscope on Sun's attempt to stop its UK resellers from buying their kit cheaper from the continent.

Up to 25 per cent of Sun resellers could have their accreditation taken away from them, the UK channel paper reports.

Sun says the clampdown has nothing to do with parallel imports. Restrictive distribution within the EU is of course illegal.

Here is the Microscope scoop. ®