Tips:
1) Rename the default eBay lists from “General Interest” to “Special Offers”, “Sale items” etc – things that might tempt people to sign up.

2) With every parcel/despatch email send a discount voucher for signing up to your website email list – no sign up, no voucher

3) Add a link to your email signature saying “Click here to be informed of special offers and discounts – use email to reply to all ASQs and potential buyers will see it.

At the end of the day you can’t change the past and you can’t market to previous eBay customers if they’ve not already given their permission, but you can change what you do in the future to encourage them to let you market to them

The copyright on the image used in this listing belongs to me. I appreciate that images can be found on the internet and that you may have used it thinking it was free to use.

If you wish to continue to use it you are welcome to buy a licence for your own use at a cost of £25. If you do not wish to do this please remove it immediately.

If the image is still in use in 12 hours the matter will be reported to eBay who may take actions up to and including suspension.

There is more information on image theft at:

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/image-text.html

If that didn’t work I’d send the boys roundthen I would let my solicitor write the letters.

Also it’s hard to stop SMS spam which is what I charged the company in this story for.

Where’s Victor Meldrew when you need him…

If they have an opt out at the bottom of the email I’d probably give them the benefit of the doubt and use it. If they don’t I’d send them the spam letter with that as the reason for the charge.

I do think it’s important if you’re going to send the letter that you’re sure you haven’t given permission, although equally if I’m certain I haven’t I’ll be charging in the future

Basically if you have your email setup correctly you should never receive any spam emails. What to use and how to use it might make a nice blog post.

I’ve just received a “marketing email” from a company whose website I visited yesterday, but with whom I did not sign up for anything.

It is promoting a product that I THINK I may have signed up for marketing emails from a couple of years back (but haven’t had anything from them in ages, and I think I said “okay then” to their French website and this is an English company…).

The email says “You recently gave us permission to contact you by e-mail. ”

I am pretty sure I did not.

How on earth does one prove that this is spam? Because frankly, if I were a spammer, I would just write “you gave us permission yada yada” on the bottom of all my emails, on the basis that most people wouldn’t know who they’d given permission to.

Ads are just that – ads. Software or services don’t remove your legal obligations

Seems to be a very thin divide between a legitimate email marketing campaign and spam email

Surely a clear Unsubscribe option resolves the issue

That having made an ebay sale, the customer is then encouraged to shop at the sellers own online shop after the completion of the sale.

In order to make that initial approach a seller needs to retain the buyers email address.

I fully accept that there must be a Unsubscribe link Cleary visible

What is your opinion on this?

(a) that person has obtained the contact details of the recipient of that electronic mail in the course of the sale or negotiations for the sale of a product or service to that recipient;

(b) the direct marketing is in respect of that person’s similar products and services only; and

(c) the recipient has been given a simple means of refusing (free of charge except for the costs of the transmission of the refusal) the use of his contact details for the purposes of such direct marketing, at the time that the details were initially collected, and, where he did not initially refuse the use of the details, at the time of each subsequent communication.

So basically and where most companies fall down, before they can spam you they have to have given you the option to opt out. Importantly that opt out should be at the time the company collected your contact details, not when they start spamming you. Simply selling a product or service isn’t enough to legitimise spam.

On the business emails your right and it’s a big hole in the regulations. You can pretty much spam businesses as much as you want and there’s very little they can do about it. It also doesn’t include snail mail but only covers electronically transmitted communications.

If they ask you to stop then you must stop. They don’t have to be subscribed or double opt in as many believe.

It’s also worth knowing that there is no actual regulation for business emails such as info@ or admin@ etc where there is no real name and where the company is ltd, partnership etc.