Dash – cleverly concealed spam

I don’t particularly enjoy criticizing companies, but sometimes things are so obvious (which is not to say they are not clever) they deserve a post, even if it’s on a tiny little blog like this.

Today, got an email from Dash, the makers of the car GPS navigation unit on steroids, and for which I applied to receive one of their “beta” units. Didn’t really get one, which was not appreciated, particularly considering I have been involved with GPS technologies since the first portable units were manufactured, such as the Garmin GPS-55AVD (which I still keep). From developing complex fishing buoy data systems to tracking a fleet of over 200 garbage trucks (when GPRS was not even invented, and it was all done over analog radio modems), I even helped Kenwood debug their TK-780 (also known as Fleetsync) radios, the first sporting built-in GPS data relay modems. So, even though I felt well qualified to get a test unit, I never even got an email from Dash, until it was time to pre-order. Then, out of the blue, an email arrives:

Dear N/A:

We’ve had a great response to our recent pre-order email program and are working hard to finish the first version of the product for general consumer sales. Thank you for your continued interest and support! We hope you don’t mind taking just a few minutes to answer this brief survey. As always, your effort is much appreciated.

The survey itself can be found here. Before it disappears, I have taken a screenshot of the extremely short “survey”:

Yeah, it took no time at all. I believe one can click one of the checkboxes and hit ‘Submit’ in less than one second (they said “a few minutes” in their email…maybe the survey site is slow to load, who knows!).

Now, do I have any reason to think that this is cleverly concealed spam? I mean, they only ask me if I was aware they are taking pre-orders, and in case I forgot, they handily provide the link to the order page – in bold. Are they not interested in any other opinion I may have? Or things I’d like to see in their product? Or suggestions and comments? Rating their efforts? No, they just wanted to remind me that I can pre-order one of their devices. Alas, I think I will pass on this one.