Good morning Jennifer
Upon investigating your concern, I would like to assure you that we have removed your details from our internal marketing list on 27 August 2009 and reassure you that no correspondence will be sent to you in the future.
As is our practice we followed the necessary procures with regards to contacting the Direct Marketing Association and checking to see if your name appeared as a do -not –mail. As your name didn’t appear, we went ahead and mailed you.
Your name was obtained from a reputable company specialising in the supplying of databases for direct marketing, and you should ensure that your name is lodged with this organisation as this is the recognised body that will hold your details and advise against any future communications.
Kind regards,
Dear Truworths,
Thank you for taking me off of your system.
I will be forwarding further complaints with the DMA. I did not even
know that they are privy to my details and may distribute them as they
please by default. Surely they need to ask for permission from
consumers that would like to opt-in by default!
However I understand this is not longer your issue.
Best Regards,
So this is all that Truworths can do for me. Fine. I understand.
What remains is the feeling of unease that anyone can get a hold of my information by default, unless i put myself on the do-not-mail list. I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THERE WAS A LIST!!!
How is it legal for our personal details to be distributed like this BY DEFAULT?? The government has clearly allowed for this to take place. When has it become allowed for government to decide that our privacy is no longer important and that businesses can have our details in order to market their own stuff. SURELY should a consumer WANT to receive marketing information they can have the choice whether or not to OPT IN. Not be put on a list WITHOUT OUR KNOWLEDGE, and then be told upon inquiry that we had to CHOOSE to opt out!!!
This entire schpheel has been educational. I know now to go opt out with the Direct Marketing Association. However this just means that they won't send me annoying mail. It says nothing about deleting my information from their lists - it just puts me on another one.
On the one hand I accept that technology makes the transfer of information, personal or otherwise much more easily collected, shared and sold. I cannot deny that I'm loving most of the good stuff that's coming out of this technological advancement - faster computers, better phones... I do enjoy. However, I certainly hope that more effort is being put in by people in government and legal sectors in order to protect the consumers. Businesses make the effort to appeal to government for more rights in order to further their businesses. They will fight to get such like our personal details in order to do "direct marketing", but them having access to these details means that even more people do, leading to the even easier identity theft. Consumers not involved in these businesses just want to get on with their lives most of the time... Buy the products they need, go home, kiss their husbands and kids goodnight... Could we not keep it this way? Or consumers need to make and absolute, unanimous outcry, will things only change then? Isn't it the job of the government to protect the majority of people? Well we'd be safer without the added risk of leaking personal info thanks... I'm good without the adverts!!
No comments:
Post a Comment