marketing material

michilin27

hi

just wondering if anyone can help- i had a littlewoods account which i have now closed but they have advised me that i will still recieve marketing material for up to three months after the closure despite me asking for it no longer to be sent, i am aware that this is standard practise across the board(recieved the same speel from cap one when closing acc)

my question is, if you are no longer a customer and are requesting to be removed from marketing, is there anything legally can be done to stop the marketing coming within this three months period?

hope that makes sense guys........

thanks

Badger_Lady

Hia,

Very often, this is a genuine constraint of their internal systems... a company could have, say, 12 million customers on their central database and this would have been updated to say that you're no longer mailable.

However, they can only extract from this database every 2 months for direct marketing purposes, due to the size of data needed (a lot of time and expense to carry out an extract). They will only extract mailable customers... but, if they happened to extract data that included you just before you made the request, it will still be on mailing files for another 2 months until they refresh again.

They'll quote 3 months as an absolute maximum, but it will actually be less than this and it's possible you won't get anything at all (not all mailings go to all customers, generally).

So, you can push them and demand further action, but it would genuinely be very difficult to find your individual case and isolate it - particularly if you then told other people and an expectation was set.

P.S. I don't know anything about Littlewoods and how they run things - this is just an example based on my experience of working in Direct Marketing :-)

michilin27

Badger_Lady wrote: »

Hia,

Very often, this is a genuine constraint of their internal systems... a company could have, say, 12 million customers on their central database and this would have been updated to say that you're no longer mailable.

However, they can only extract from this database every 2 months for direct marketing purposes, due to the size of data needed (a lot of time and expense to carry out an extract). They will only extract mailable customers... but, if they happened to extract data that included you just before you made the request, it will still be on mailing files for another 2 months until they refresh again.

They'll quote 3 months as an absolute maximum, but it will actually be less than this and it's possible you won't get anything at all (not all mailings go to all customers, generally).

So, you can push them and demand further action, but it would genuinely be very difficult to find your individual case and isolate it - particularly if you then told other people and an expectation was set.

P.S. I don't know anything about Littlewoods and how they run things - this is just an example based on my experience of working in Direct Marketing :-)

thanks for your reply, i dont suppose you know the legal element of it? ie, if u phone a company and ask them not to send you any more stuff, is there an amount of time in law terms that they can still send u info?

thanks

Badger_Lady

I'm not sure what the law states, to be honest... my understanding is that it's a guidance rather than a strict time limit and that, if questioned, the company needs to show that it is taking "reasonable measures" to exclude an opted-out person from mailings.

This means that, if they were still mailing you in 4 months' time, they would have to show exactly what they'd done to attempt to exclude you. If they'd just sat back and done nothing, they'd be punished.

Someone else may have more specific understanding... I'm only aware of the "best practice" guidelines that my companies have followed, we've never had to work to legal minimums.

Almost_In_The_Black

Badger Lady is spot on, the whole process can be quite lengthy as once an extract is taken from a main customer database there's numerous pieces of selection/processing that can be done to select the correct customers and then finally it'll need to be sent to a mailing house for mailsorting/other processing and ultimately mailing. So saying three months ensures that you allow for sufficient time for anything in the pipeline to be worked through.

As far as I know as long as a company can prove that it has actioned a no mail request/closure straightaway then they are in the clear even if there is a lag for this request to filter through. However I'll admit that I'm not aware of how much time is allowed for this in DM legislation (e.g. 3 months seems to be the norm but I suspect 6+months would land a company in trouble).

POSSETTE

do what i do, been doing it for years.When you get any mail you dont want,write "return to sender,not at this address" on it and repost it.Takes about 2-3 times but they have to pay return postage so they soon deal with it.Much better than phoning and requesting its done!!
even better,if they enclose a return post envelope,use that to reply with.
I dont get anything anymore!
Wonder why?????