EE-k, a hundred grand! BT's mobile arm slapped for sending 2.5m+ unwanted texts EE, the mobile operator arm of BT, is nursing a six-figure fine for texting more than 2.5 million pain-in-the-ass direct marketing messages to customers without their consent. The £100,000 penalty handed down by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (PDF) was for sending mailers in early 2018 that pestered punters to …
I'm not an EE customer, but to ALL telecoms providers (and others!):
Stop sending me junk.
All is does is make me use your services *LESS*, not more.
I always opt-out, mainly because then I want to know who *can't* understand a simple customer request (or secure their customer database) or who wilfully goes against such requests, so I can adjust my purchasing decisions accordingly.
P.S. I couldn't care less about your app, either. Even if it was just a service message, go away. If I said no texts, I'll suffer no texts. Unless it's about "everything is broke and isn't going to work, we're working on it" or "we're about to cut you off because you haven't paid your bill", then I don't want to know.
P.P.S. Send me one of those American-style missing child alerts at 4am, when the child is in another state, and they happen almost every evening. Go on. I dare you. As it is, the phone number I give out to people is actually connected to a 4G Wifi box that can't ring, start playing games with me and I'll just carry one of those around with me and have my phone only connect to its Wifi so you can't even do that.
Stupid interpretation of the rules here.
If EE wanted to notify its customers that they've come to the end of their plan and can save significant sums by changing to another plan or trade in their old phone for a new one they legally can't now if they've opted out.
This is just stupid shortsightedness. I agree they shouldn't just bombard with marketing but warning customers they can save money if they downloaded an app and managed their account online is surely a positive.
You must be a marketing droid. "Why on earth would customers not want to hear about our great deals?!"
If I've opted out then I'VE OPTED OUT! If it means I don't get a reminder to upgrade my phone or change tariff that's my problem. The bottom line here, as TFA points out, "the mobile operator distributed 16.6 million messages to customers..., and 2.59 million of these were to people who had opted out of receiving marketing messages via text.", is that people either didn't consent to the messages in the first place or specifically opted out of them. EE knew this and tried to blag their way out by claiming they were service messages which wasn't the case.
It's a marketing message. Even if it would be a thing I'm interested in, it's marketing. If I stopped you on the street today and said I was selling laptops for any piece of scrap paper (always assuming I was being honest), I'd be marketing to you even though you would probably see how many pieces of paper you could find in your bag. This is the deal with advertising. Sometimes, it actually tells people about things they decide they want. Sometimes, it is an annoying intrusion. Those two sets aren't necessarily mutually distinct. This is why we have things like opt out/in methods for customers to tell places whether they want to see the ads; I have opted in to some communications and opted out to others because I've decided what I want to see.
Wife got MONTHS and MONTHS of BT phoning her post swallowing of EE "would you be interested in moving your phone line to BT?" "We could potentially save your business thousands" "we could supply you with a dedicated landline for your business"
This despite being told by her "NO, stop phoning me" EVERYTIME, I think I told them to Foxtrot Oscar in the end as they then started calling the landline also
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