Comments on: Is it legal to ‘force you’ to accept email marketing?

By: Anon

Anon — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:00:44 +0000

Why does anyone go to f'ing Starbucks? There are dozens of great, local coffee shops within a few miles of me, not one of which charges for internet or sells my email address.

I'm baffled that anyone puts up with it.

By: MattF

MattF — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:23:52 +0000

I guess you don’t get ‘owt for nowt!

But, to get free wifi, maybe we should be prepared to accept some marketing, at least you would hope it would be targeted and (vaguely) useful?

Still…I am not convinced. It is just an easy route to get more email addresses and build their contact lists.

By: eaon

eaon — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:32:01 +0000

I’ve seen a couple of these sneaky things lately,
@guy as far as I know it is technically illegal however it’s one of those things that’s rarely ‘enforced’.
From starbucks and BT point of view – it’s one of those silly thoughtless things that it going to cause ill feeling which far outweighs any benefit of having the data, they should know better.

By: Guy

Guy — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:42:18 +0000

It’s illegal to make you ‘opt out’ rather than ‘opt in’ for email marketing. Maybe the law gets determinist on Free Will after that. Maybe Starbucks found some loophole. I guess the latter’s more likely.

Bundling together T&Cs with spam is sneaky and snide. At very very least, they should be separate tick boxes – one mandatory, the other ignore-able.

By: Phil Hails-Smith

Phil Hails-Smith — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:31:50 +0000

This is not illegal unfortunately. It’s quite a strange thing for Starbucks to do and what often happens is that within the the Terms and Conditions (which normally everyone accepts without reading) there will be a privacy policy which will set out whether Starbucks can send your personal information to 3rd parties.

In this way its making it clearer to you what they are intending to do rather than hiding it away in the Terms and Conditions which no one reads.

I’m afraid that “free wifi” has never really existed as the price has always been providing information for the provider’s database and possible the database of third parties.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:09:42 +0000

@James Cherkoff

Pretty sure he’s tried that.

The whole point was if you just un-tick the box you can’t proceed and get wifi

By: James Cherkoff

James Cherkoff — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:08:54 +0000

Can’t you just un-tick it?

By: Richard Parker

Richard Parker — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:02:39 +0000

According to the Privacy and Electronic Communications ( EC Directive) Regulations 2003, organisations cannot send unsolicited marketing communications by email to individual subscribers unless the recipient has given his prior consent. Which means the opportunity to actively opt in to receive communications (generally considered best practice) or opt out od receiving communications.

In this case you don’t have an opportunity to opt-out – it is part of the condition of using the service, which I’m pretty sure is illegal.

But I’m no lawyer.

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:11:12 +0000

What this illustrates is the rather blaise attitude people have to the definition of the word ‘free’ these days.

Starbucks are charging you for their Wifi by making you receive marketing spam.

Depressingly, I doubt there is much you can do about it.

By: Mark Trapp

Mark Trapp — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 11:35:45 +0000

Boy, that’s a doozy. While CAN-SPAM requires companies to provide clear mechanisms to opt-out from all future messages, checking that box and logging in seems like it falls under the “affirmative consent” section of the law: it’s clearly stated that by logging in, you’re opting back in. I don’t think US Law is set up to handle this, and I’m sure Starbucks’s lawyers knew that. You probably could file a complaint to the FTC, as this doesn’t seem to follow the spirit of the SPAM rules in place.