Thursday, November 15, 2007

Finally! Barclaycard Apologises

It took them long enough, but I eventually got an apology from Barclaycard for their illegal marketing activities and invasion of privacy.
The original offending letter is dated 26th July 2007, and arrived in the mail the following Monday. I complained to Barclaycard enquiries on 30th July 2007, i.e. 14 weeks ago.
This is the letter of apology I received today from Chris Sweeney, Managing Executive of Absa Card. His letter refers to a complaint of 22 October: clearly someone at ABSA has misled him to avoid being fired, since my complaint was not made 4 weeks ago, but 14 weeks ago. Even my complaint to the DMA was lodged in mid September.
I guess I should be thankful for an apology at all, even though no apology is made for buying my data from Experian/P-Cubed/Effective Intelligence, or for failing to check this data against the DMA "Do Not Call" list.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the series of articles! I am having the same issues with direct marketing, and everybody ducking and diving, and using loopholes in the laws! I just wish there was a way to kill this business...

The proposed law is flawed in one aspect: it should force the use of an opt-in database to be built, and not an opt-out. As for registering with an opt-out database, I am loath to do so, since I will effectively be updating the information they have about me already!