MSE Cheap Energy Club spam

Daytona

Anyone from MSE care to explain why your emails are breaking the Data Protection Act ?

From my CEC account settings -
Only notify you when you could save: £25 per year

Urgent: Your provider Scottish Power is hiking its standard dual fuel prices by 7.8%

As you know - because you have all my details - I don't have dual fuel.

As you know, I've got a 3 year fixed rate which is cheaper than any quotes you provide.

There is no urgency.

MSEs best quote is 15%pa more than my current rate.

...but that won't stop you spamming me, will it ?

System

How exactly are they breaking The Data Protection Act when the information, until posted here, was available only to you or your nominated other e-mail address?

Energy Club Monitoring Info
How you'd like to pay: Monthly Direct Debit
Only notify you when you could save: £25 per year
Notify you by:

Daytona

By sending me unsolicited emails, in breach of what was agreed.

System

Daytona wrote: »

By sending me unsolicited emails, in breach of what was agreed.

With respect you may be misquoting the applicable Law. From the ICO website:


What are spam emails?

Spam emails are generally, but not always, marketing emails sent to you without consent. It is email that you don’t want and didn’t ask for, and its content can cause embarrassment and distress. However, it’s worth remembering that the sender generally doesn’t target recipients personally. The same spam email can be sent to millions of people at the same time and the addresses can often be guessed.

Not all marketing emails sent without consent are spam emails. Marketing emails can be sent without prior consent by organisations who obtained your email address when you bought something from them and are advertising similar products or services. However, these marketing emails must abide by strict rules regarding their content and provide you with the opportunity to opt out.

What does the law say?

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 cover the sending of email marketing. This legislation says that organisations must only send marketing emails to individuals if you have agreed to receive them, except where there is a clearly defined customer relationship.

It could be argued that the last clause might apply unless you have specially asked MSE not to contact you. Do you receive the weekly e-mail for example?

That said, it might be a tick box that MSE might like to consider adding to their website.

Daytona

The law does indeed apply to MSE. There is no customer relationship. As I've said, there are clearly defined circumstances under which MSE can lawfully contact me and when they can't. They've breached that by sending me generic spam which they know is irrelevant to my situation.

MSE_Dan_L

Hi Daytona

I'm sorry to hear that you didn't find our update emails about the recent Scottish Power rate change helpful.

Although you're currently on a long-term fixed, our editorial team felt it was best to send out an update to all members of the club who are supplied by Scottish Power. We sent a tailored message to those on its standard tariff and a separate one to people on a fix.

Indeed we've had some replies from people who got the 'fixed message' thanking us for the update and the reassurance that their rates aren't affected. The challenge we have is we've a huge number of members and some are less energy savvy than others. Whilst it sounds like you're well aware that you'd be unaffected, this isn't the case for others despite being on a fix. So our aim here was to provide some clarity on what happens next.

We do cover that we'll send additional 'news related' emails in our Energy Club privacy policy under 2.4.1.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/privacy-policy#energyclub

However, your feedback is certainly interesting and our techies are planning to introduce further preferences in the future, so that you're able to tailor the types of messages you may received.

I hope this explanation helps.

Daytona

Thanks Dan.

Scottish Power also contacted their customers - "Relax - your ScottishPower energy deal is protected" - so MSE duplicated that message with considerably more hyperbole.

I'm also signed up for energy saving alerts with GoCompare, MoneySuperMarket, EnergyHelpline, Which? Switch and uSwitch, none of whom send me emails unless they can provide a better quote. This make MSE CEC the spammiest energy saving service I subscribe to - the last thing I would expect of MSE.

I'll unsubscribe and re-subscribe only when I think MSE will be able to provide a competitive quote.