Things That Grind Our (And Your) Gears: Yankees-Steiner Cold Calls

Predictably, the most popular posts on weblogs are the negative ones. Along that line of thinking, we are going to start a new series of posts called: "Things That Grind Our (And Your) Gears." The rules are simple: any time something regarding the operational side of the New York Yankees frustrates one of our readers enough to email us, and that issue has bothered us as well, we will make a post about it.

Today we come to you with a complaint from "DaraGardensApartment" regarding Yankees-Steiner sales techniques:

Hey Ross.

I use this email address for NOTHING other than my Yankees account and other personal stuff..

I started getting emails rom Steiner Sports about buying my old seats and NOW Steiner (with permission from the Yanks or without) decided that they can start soliciting business from me

Thanks Mr. Trost!!!

Below the complaint was a forwarded Steiner Sports marketing email for Final Four merchandise. The Yankees had lent this person's email address to Steiner for marketing purposes. We feel for this person, as we too have received annoying marketing emails from Steiner, albeit only ones regarding the Yankees memorabilia sale. Apparently, being Yankees season ticket holders saddles us with the responsibility of having to opt-out of marketing emails from other companies. What an honor.

Sadly, spam in our email inbox is something we have grown accustomed to. However, what REALLY grinds our gears are the cold calls from these greedy bastards. Twice this week, some dude with a Long Island accent (something else that grinds our gears), called while we were at work and left messages ON OUR CELL PHONE. This salesman was calling from the Steiner Collectibles store in the Roosevelt Field Mall and didn't want to let us miss the amazing opportunity of buying our EXACT season seats from the old Yankee Stadium. That's right, for the low cost of $1999, we would have the once in a lifetime opportunity of purchasing the upper deck seats that we had enjoyed Yankees playoff failures in since way back in the Torre-era, 2005. Memories such as the the time we arrived to find those very seats soiled with bird feces would obviously be included, but we had to act fast because the offer expired on Friday, May 22.

Needless to say, we did not call Steiner back to jump on this amazing offer, although our first instinct was to call back and let them know how we felt about their cold-calling tactics. Then, we realized that New Stadium Insider is the perfect sounding board for this type of beef. Why call and yell at some minimum wage worker, when we could make a post like this and call out the idiots who decided this type of marketing was a good idea?

We were able to deal with John Sterling giving us an automated call on the day that the seats went on sale - its always good to hear from automated John. After all, we understand that every Yankee season ticket holder is not an obsessive Yankees news reader like we are, and might have missed the news about seats going on sale. What we can't understand is "opt-out" marketing phone calls and emails from Steiner. The Yankees simply gave Steiner carte blanche to email us or call us whenever they wanted, requiring us to "opt-out" if we wanted to stop them. Typically, reputable companies employ "opt-in" marketing procedures. Some people may have enjoyed Steiner calling them and pestering them to buy overpriced relics from the old Yankee Stadium, and those people could have easily asked for such calls via a portal in their Yankees Account.

We can't be the only ones who were really annoyed by these sales tactics. Let us hear your cold calling anecdotes in the comments.