AICPA Fail: Did You Get The Email For a CPA.com Address?

Posted by jmungar on Aug 28 2012 1068 printer friendly

Opened up Outlook this morning to an email from AICPA titled "Claim your personal email address Joel.Ungar@cpa.com; I'd paste it in but my skills are falling a little bit.

Here is the text:

Dear Joel,

Our CPA.com email service has officially launched. And we are personally inviting you to be among the first AICPA members to claim your own individually-branded CPA.com email address, such as Joel.Ungar@cpa.com.

Like most professionals, you probably already have a business email address where you work. Now you can have a secondary, professionally-branded email address for all your personal and professional needs. An individually-branded CPA.com email address not only reinforces your professional designation, you can take it with you throughout your professional career.

CPA.com email addresses are available exclusively to AICPA members who are CPAs. Sign up online now – registration is quick and easy.

When you get to the website, you find out that the "Full email account" costs only$99.95 a year and a "Forward-only" account costs only $29.95 a year.

I don't have a problem at all with the AICPA selling products and making money. I have a big problem when they send out an email that essentially makes it sound like they are offering you something for free and then you find out it isn't.

Do you see anywhere in the text that this is going to cost you anything? I see that "registration is quick and easy" but nowhere anything about a fee.

Boo. This is a fail as far as I'm concerned. CPAs are viewed as ethical and honest and here our own association is doing a bait and switch.

Count me out on this one.

This blog

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Joel M. Ungar, CPA is a lifelong resident of the Detroit area and a graduate of The University of Michigan. He is a principal with Silberstein Ungar, PLLC, a Top 15 auditor of SEC public reporting companies. Joel writes observations on different matters and especially on working with and using LinkedIn. He thinks he has a sense of humor.

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