2013-07-27

Finally a list provider is spamming me

So, Thomson spamming me..

I am actually trying to tackle the whole issue of damages here - how do I quantify the cost of receiving a spam or a series of spam - often it can throw me off my train of thought and cause significant stress and annoyance but rarely means paying extra cash to anyone. It costs A&A tens of thousands in spam filtering servers, hosting, power, networking, staff time and so on.

What I am proposing in this reply is one of several tactics I am trying out. The idea here is to make the damages a clearly demonstrable cost by making it part of a contract for the email services (just with me personally for now). This has not gone to court yet, and I have not collected the money from the company yet.

I am open to other ideas - I think £50 is not an unreasonable level of damages, and some other sites tackling spammers suggest that it should be much higher even as a personal claim.

Anway, my reply to latest spam:-
On 27/07/13 18:33, Thomson Data UK wrote:
> Hi Adrian
> 
> We’d love [redacted] to try us as a supplier for business
> marketing data.
> 
> Our permission based B2B UK Data holds just over 695,000 records.  Full
> information fields are included with an email address with every record.
I would love to know how you identify which of the email addresses in
your databases are held by an "individual subscriber" whereby it could
be a criminal offence to send unsolicited marketing emails. You even
have to take in to account cases where an email address may have
previously been that for a contact at a business, and is now supplied to
an individual subscriber.

Notably, you failed with regard to the email address to which you have
sent this email. In light of this please take note of the following.

NOTICE BEFORE ACTION!

You have transmitted an unsolicited communication for the purpose of
direct marketing by means of electronic mail to an individual
subscriber contrary to section 22 of The Privacy and Electronic
Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

Andrews & Arnold Ltd provide spam filtering services to the subscriber
for this email address, and provide compensation to the subscriber for
emails which get past the spam filtering. The compensation claimed by
the subscriber in this case is £50 as per our terms with the subscriber.

As such Andrews & Arnold Ltd has suffered a loss of £50 because of your
breach of the regulations. Under section 30 of the regulations, Andrews
& Arnold Ltd is entitled to take civil action against you for damages.
We hereby claim damages from you for costs of £50.

Should this matter go to court we indentd to rely on your email as
evidence of your communication contrary to the regulations, and a copy
of the contract between the recipient and Andrews & Arnold Ltd as to
damages incurred as well as a statement from the recipient confirming
consent was not given for transmission of such emails.

In light of pre-action conduct directions under the civil procedure
rules for action in the county court small claims track, and in
consideration of the sums involved we invite "discussion and
negotiation" as a means of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), via
email. If we receive no reply within 14 days, or if this discussion and
negotiation does not resolve the matter, we will proceed with a county
court claim without further notice.

Please send your payment to:-

Sort Code 20-16-99
Account   30170666
Reference A1209A-PECN0090

We may report this matter to the criminal enforcement authority for such
breaches. They may take action and involve the CPS as well as issuing
fines. If you choose to resolve this matter promptly with a payment we
will refrain from doing so in this case.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

-- Adrian Kennard Director Andrews & Arnold Ltd UK Company 3342760

12 comments:

  1. Should this matter go to court we *indent* to rely on your email... ??

    ReplyDelete
  2. 4th paragraph below "NOTICE BEFORE ACTION!" s/indent/intend perhaps?

    ReplyDelete
  3. > we indent to rely on your email

    I presume you mean:
    .... we /intend/ to rely on your email....

    ReplyDelete
  4. The last three posts brought to you courtesy of Bike-sheds 'r' us :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fifty quid sounds like a good place to start. If they mess you about, increase it to cover the cost of handling it further!
    Cheers,
    Howard

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think you need to be clear if it's Thompson or Thomson.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Thomson Data UK" spam my work address. This is a named work address (chris@ as opposed to role@) but I suspect PECR offers me no protection.

    Putting PECR aside, how are these "list providers" able to act in accordance with DPA ? Does DPA really allow them to store my details, and sell on my details to others, as they please, all without my consent ?

    Incidentally, I'm struggling to find them in the register of data controllers (http://www.ico.org.uk/ESDWebPages/Search).

    ) comply with DPA ?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Rev, so far this week, I've had an unsolicited email from Directline, and on phoning them, they've agreed to send me a written assurance that they won't email me again, and a cheque for £30.

    I'm now chasing play.com over an unsolicited email, and I wondered if you'd permit me to copy some of your boilerplate, specifically the paragraph starting "In light of pre-action..."

    Ta

    ReplyDelete

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