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Warding off Unsolicited Advertisement
Complaining that your mailbox at home and your inbox for eMails are full of advertisements and you want to stop this nuisance is very understandable. What can you do about it?
You presumably ordered something on the internet or participated in sweepstakes at your local supermarket and did not uncheck the box on “advertisement”. When buying something on the internet, you will usually have to submit personal details and somewhere during the process of purchase, there is a tiny ticked box and a bunch of small letters next to it, with which you will be granting the company the permission to send you “newsletters” or sometimes even expressly advertisements.
Since you gave them permission, you have no rights to complain. You could and should have zoomed in to the little text and especially have paid more attention to what was being shown. The same goes for the sweepstakes. You should have read the card for the raffle more closely to find that you have to check a box not to receive advertisements. And if this permission also included “information” from partner companies, you can expect a lot more…
Yes, you can do something about it! You have to write a letter or send an eMail to each and every company sending you the “unwanted” advertisement and inform them that you do not wish this anymore. Its a little different if you can determine who was passing your details. In that case, this company will have to inform their partners – if you request that they tell them, too. You also have the right to demand that this company provides you with the names of all their partners. The law obligates the companies to actively instruct you that they will “share” your address. A typical place to find such “instruction on share” would be for a catalog sales company, like Amazon, on the summary page of your shopping. They are quite brash – not to say mean – if they put it in the middle in a long list of boxes to check or not.
Give them about a month’s time of grace to stop the mailing. If you wish to generally protect yourself in the future then register at the Robinson list, www.Robinsonliste.de – only in German.
Another possibility for defense is to inform the Verbraucherzentrale in your state, (an organization protecting consumer’s interests in the public) about the reason for your aggravation. Depending on the case, this organization will admonish the company for spamming.