Joe Brown's passing on details

Mista_C

A head's up for those placing orders with the Joe Brown's website.

Back in April 2011 my OH was feeling a bit down so to cheer her up a bit I thought I would surprise her by buying her a skirt and top she'd been looking at on the Joe Brown website.
During the ordering process I entered my OH's name, prefix (Miss) from a drop-down menu and her address. I then entered my card details which had no field for a prefix so resulted in just a name (John Smith). I checked/unchecked the necessary fields regarding the passing on of my details to 3rd party organisations and when asked if I would like to create an account I declined, as far as I was concerned this would be a one-off.
At some point between ordering and delivery the Joe Brown system decided to add the recipient prefix to the card holder and use that name with the delivery address, so on arrival the items were addressed to "Miss John Smith" at my OH's address. We had a chuckle about it and left it at that.

Fast forward to 12 months later and I start getting post via snail mail with offers of 'CASH LOANS for whatever you want from £100 to £500' from Provident. I rarely get post at this address (my cards are registered to my business address) and have most of my mail delivered to my business address so I assumed it was just everyday junk mail. That was until I was about to put it in the recycling and re-read the address label... "Miss John Smith".

The only previous time that ever happened was on ordering from the Joe Brown's website so I have to conclude that Joe Brown's have been passing, or selling, my details on to 3rd parties against my wishes.

pawsies

That hasn't happened to me, have you contacted them regarding it?

Mista_C

pawsies wrote: »

That hasn't happened to me, have you contacted them regarding it?

I haven't yet. I've been digging through my old emails for the original order but there's nothing on there regarding my opt-in/out preferences. I was hoping I could provide proof should I require it before contacting them.

I'll get in touch with them and see what they say.

Mista_C

This gets even more bizarre. I just went on to the site to contact them and while there took a dummy run through their checkout procedure. On checkout I was asked to login or create an account, something I certainly didn't do in April 2011.

I keep an encrypted database of all account details I've created since the late 1990s and Joe Browns is not on there, so I couldn't login. I asked it to send my password to the email address I used for the order confirmation back in 2011 and, sure enough, I received my password, it was my girlfriend's postcode. There is no way I would use something as simple as my girlfriend's postcode as a password, and certainly not for any site that I have provided card details. I usually keep around 20 pass-phrases of between 15-20 characters, replacing random letters with special characters, for any site that requires my card details.

On logging in it provided me with my girlfriend's address as a delivery address and mine 'Miss John Smith' as the card holder address.
While in this mysterious account I also noticed that "I do not wish my details to be passed on to 3rd parties" is checked by default...



...so I've now contacted them and asked what is going on with receiving Provincial loan offers and why they appear to have opened an account for me.

kazzah60

I believe this company may be a subsidiary of another company with which I have a mail order account

I opted out of having marketing calls from the company concerned AND any 3rd party calls - despite this I received numerous calls from someone offering Postcode Lottery - I know that my catalogue company sold them my details because I asked them what account number they had for me - and they reeled off my account number

I tried contacting head office via the phone centre- got no-where and then I wrote a letter telling them they were in breach of the Data protection act for passing on my details without my permission and they offered a 25% discount on my next order - I was disgusted that they expected to retain me as a customer after the breach and told them so - they asked what remedy I wanted and I told them I wanted my balance ( about £450) written off

I didn't expect them to comply, but I thought it was worth a shot

to my immense surprise they wrote off my account balance!

it was well worth the letter to their compliance officer - who clearly understood they were in the wrong - so my advice to anyone in a similar situation is to give it a shot - you ahve nothing to lose and everything to gain.