What's worse than bad e-mail marketing?

Overzealous, premature bad e-mail marketing:

From: Amazon.com [mailto:promo-core@amazon.com]
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 7:19 AM
To: Heather Hamilton
Subject: [placeholder for winning team] Wins the NCAA Tournament!

 

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

 

Congratulations, [placeholder for winning team]! As someone who has

purchased sports-related products, we thought you should be the first to

see our selection of NCAA championship products.

 

<redacted>

 

Available only while supplies last.

 

We hope you enjoyed receiving this message. However, if you'd rather not

receive future e-mails of this sort from Amazon.com, please follow this

link to opt out:

 

<redacted>

 

(c) 2006 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Amazon.com and the Amazon.com logo are registered trademarks of

Amazon.com, Inc. "and you're done" is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.

 

Amazon.com, 1200 12th Ave. S., Suite 1200, Seattle, WA 98144-2734.

 

Please note that this e-mail was sent to the following address:

heathham@microsoft.com

OK, seriously. Seriously? It's not enough that someone in their direct marketing group had an itchy trigger finger (feel free to speculate as to whether this was a technology error or a human error). The best part is that I went to USC. And I buy USC merchandise (probably too much of it) though I don't recall  buying any through Amazon...I may have. Now if USC is going to pull out a win in the NCAA championship, it's going to be a flippin' miracle (if you don't know why, then, well...nevermind). Do they expect me to buy merchandise of some other team? Do they not understand that peoples' interest in sports is, for the most part, team specific? Yeah, that means I won't be purchasing the UCLA or Florida items featured on their site (shuddering at the thought). Know me better, Amazon...sheesh. Placeholder.

I've heard a lot of talk lately about how well Amazon knows it's customers. The timing is interesting. This e-mail is three different kinds of wrong.