Word on the street is that Epsilon Interactive’s new president Ragy Thomas and its vice president of marketing, Michael Della Penna, have been calling former DoubleClick E-mail employees offering them their jobs back.

It’s no secret in the industry that there was an exodus of DoubleClick employees after Epsilon Interactive acquired the e-mail concern last year. These two firms—when Epsilon Interactive’s name was Bigfoot Interactive—were archenemies.

“Between Bigfoot, DoubleClick and Cheetahmail [before Experian acquired it] I’ve never seen competitors spit on each other like that,” said one high-ranking executive from a competitor who asked not to be named. “I thought maybe it was because they were all based in New York.”

Also, e-mail service providers in general—not just New Yorkers—hated DoubleClick because it reportedly used its e-mail services as a loss-leader to get companies to buy its advertising services. As a result, it put severe pressure on everyone’s pricing.

The bad blood between DoubleClick and Bigfoot reportedly resulted in a severe culture clash when Epsilon acquired DoubleClick’s e-mail division last February.

Even Epsilon President and CEO Michael Iaccarino said there were “culture issues between the DoubleClick and the Bigfoot team” in a recent trade report.

Moreover, DoubleClick employees reportedly had no great love for Al DiGuido, the recently departed CEO of Epsilon Interactive. Now that DiGuido is gone, Epsilon executives reportedly believe they can get some of DoubleClick’s former employees back.

Word is that so far, they’ve succeeded with one. We reached Epsilon spokesman Scott Bauman by cell phone last week to get the company’s side of this story. He failed to provide a response by deadline.