Every week I get several emails from the grocery store, run by Kroger. I click on an add, any add, in the email and I get Access Denied. That’s a slap in the face, they send me an email offering a good deal and then tell me I’m denied.

I’ve been getting these emails for months. I finally decided to do something about it. Of course Kroger doesn’t want to be bothered by its customers. There’s no working contact us link in the emails. So I goggled the CEO of Kroger and emailed him. No echo back that they got the email, nothing. Like I said they do not want to hear from their customers, just like most big corporations, they’re busy, they just want us to give them our money and go away. Well, I went away and deal with on line companies.

It cost Kroger money, lots of money to send out the emails. They have a big IT department with managers trying to build as big a department as they can, so the manger can earn more money because he runs a bigger department. That mean it cost Kroger even more money as time goes by. Then there is the advertising department. That’s expensive and adds to the cost of the emails. There are lawyers that make sure the emails meet state and federal requirements and don’t offend someone. More money. And the hidden middle men who earn their living by being in the loop. All to send a useless email out that the customer can’t use.

That’s dumb.

The workers inside Kroger use the company’s computers. I bet that the emails, they send out, look and work fine when viewed on the companies computers. Do high level board members see these emails on computers outside the company, if at all? Probably not. They have people that screen their emails, and other people to do their shopping at Whole Foods.

Has the CEO every looked at one of these emails? Why should he? He has people to do that. Has he every been inside a Kroger store except for an official visit? Why would he? His time is very valuable, he has more important stuff to do. The old idea of HP corporation where the two men that founded the corporation walked around the factory floor and talked to the workers and went to the customers and talked to them about their products is so old fashioned. Look what happened to HP when Carly Fiorina took over and stopped the old ways of doing business and ran the company by the book in the modern way . Hint, the stock price went from $78.00 a share to $13.00.

So Kroger will keep spamming people with email they can’t use, driving customers away, all the time the high level executives will keep giving themselves bigger and bigger raises. That is till we all go to on line shopping.

Stay strong, write on, and shop online.

Professor Hyram Voltage