The business adage that “money is in the list” (ie, mailing list) is untrue if such list includes email addresses which had already opted out, or have requested to opt-out or unsubscribe.
By continuing to send commercial electronic messages to those who have already requested to opt-out is a breach of the Spam Act.
The Act has established that the consent to receive further messages is considered withdrawn five days after such request is made.
This is what the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) reported following the results of its investigation of complaints against SmartyHost, a business division of MYOB Australia.
From what I have observed during the last ten years, I find five days very generous in favour of the sending company regardless of whether it has high-volume newsmail or not.
Even if the process of unsubscribing opt-outs from the mailing list system is done manually (which is very rare these days), the five day allowance is indeed a bonanza.
These days, the process of unsubscribing (like subscribing) takes only a few minutes. In fact, subscription and unsubscription processes for RSS-enabled websites are all user-controlled.
No doubt the SmartyHost case was more of a failure in management in actioning unsubscription requests, as ACMA found out.
On a personal level: I had some few encounters with companies that kept on sending me mailouts despite my repeated requests to unsubscribe. They only stopped when I started to threaten to lodge a complaint.
Have you had any similar experiences? Please use our comments box to share them with us.
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