This morning I woke up to an email from Stuffbak. If you’ve never heard of them, they were a company that was quite popular in the Palm/Windows Mobile dominant mid-2000’s, and their pitch was fairly simple: they’d send you a label with an 800 number and serial number to stick on your valuable electronics. This way if they were lost or misplaced, a good samaritan could call the number, Stuffbak would arrange shipping to return the item to the owner, and the finder received a $20 reward from Stuffbak (and the owner could increase that at their discretion).
It was neat idea, but I haven’t heard from them in years and years…so I was a bit surprised this morning to receive the following email:
So I logged in, and sure enough I apparently did have a year of Stuffbak…in 2006. On my Palm Tungsten C. Thank goodness that Stuffbak reminded me I should update my address on lapsed coverage for a device I sold 7+ years ago. Out of curiosity, I did poke around on the Stuffbak site, and it looks like they still offer the same basic features. In fact, it looks sort of like I fell into a time warp from 2006 because, aside from a handful of iPhone references in the descriptions, there’s nothing that indicates the world has moved forward. In fact, their website still uses images of flip phones and smartphones with nub antennas!
I get that Stuffbak is struggling to remain relevant, but their email today was the wrong way to do it. Instead of reminding me that I once used their service and that I might find it useful for my current devices, they asked me to update my records on a very old, outdated device. At the same time, since I remembered thinking it was a neat service at the time, I poked around their website to see what labels are appropriate for today’s smartphones. They have a list of labels of different sizes, but nowhere in the descriptions does it offer what size is best for the iPhone, or for popular models of Android devices.
It seems like Stuffbak wanted to reach back out to an audience that remembered them well, but this email was a total miss. In fact, it sent me to their website, which turned out to be an even bigger miss. I am grateful for the quick trip down memory lane and the fond recollection of my beloved Tungsten C, but this experience firmly rooted Stuffbak in the “nostalgia” category for me. Have you ever used Stuffbak?
Have they been sending you emails asking about updating your long-lost devices? Let us know in the comments!
I remember them. CompUSA used to use it as part of their PDA warantee package. I like Safetag.me better.