With Father's Day approaching, eBay launched an email marketing campaign Tuesday, which received a lot of flak from customers.
The email's subject line said, "Your father called. He approves of these deals," and many said that the advertising was done without regard and was rather cruel and insensitive, especially for those without fathers.
EBay customers turned to Twitter to express their disgust.
"I thought my father had called, who I haven't spoken to in 10 years. Your Website is traumatic," one user wrote, according to the New York Daily News.
"Email alert popped up in my phone as 'Your father called.' Made my heart jump bc my dad's not alive—shitty way of advertising, eBay," another user wrote, according to eCommerceBytes.
Here are some more of the reactions from eBay customers on Twitter:
Some users also stormed eBay's message boards to say how they felt. But in a statement, the company said that the campaign was not meant to offend anyone.
"While the premise of this campaign was well intentioned, we regret a poorly chosen subject line and apologize to any customers we may have offended," said a representative from eBay via the N.Y. Daily News.
The campaign has since been stopped.
Meanwhile, the e-commerce company's recent announcement of its split with PayPal has affected sales of its shares on the stock market, according to the Wall Street Journal. Trading for eBay shares dropped to 4 percent on Monday, its lowest in six months, prompting analysts to say that it's sales growth for the following year may fall short of its projection. EBay and Paypal are expected to part ways by the end of 2015.
