RAC breakdown cover - junk mail invasion

[Fritzoid]

I would be grateful if anyone can help me with this please.

 

I joined RAC breakdown cover in December. I have not used the service at all and hope to never need it, but it is there just in case.

Other than the initial confirmation email and card arriving by post, that was that.

Until 3 weeks ago when I started getting several emails from RAC and others in connection with the RAC, ie FeFoo who were doing a survey on behalf of the RAC.

I never gave RAC permission to annoy me with emails and certainly never consented to them giving my email address to 3^rd parties such as FeFoo.

 

I contacted RAC initially by completing their online complaints for, An autoresponder said they would reply within 5 working days.

They did not.

I did the same again and again they did not respond, so I called them to register my complaint about my complaint.

 

I received an email from RAC last week in which they apologised for not responding before and they offered me £15 compensation as an apology for the non-response.

However, they told me in the same email that when I joined I did not opt out of emails.

 

Firstly, I certainly did as I am one of those people that refused to give shops my email for this exact reason.

Secondly, I thought the law had been changed in that you now have to ‘opt in’ and the default is not to be opted in instead of the old way of opting you in unless you remove the opt in selection – as used to be the case with the likes of Adobe Flash player that used to pause enough time to get you to click ‘accept’ then autofill the additional junk software you did not want, that has now been changed to NOT autofill.

 

Can anyone please clarify if I am right on this?

RAC should not be opting me in unless I specifically say that I want to be by ME selecting an opt-in box, rather than me having to look for and select selecting an opt-out box.

 

Ironically, they said in the same e-mail that I had now been removed and would receive no more junk, then sent me more junk the very next day!

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[dx100uk]

well the recent junk mail would have already been in the system when you recently got removed.

I believe the law was changed upon things like PPI and auto sign up.

they can not longer tick a box for you.

but companies now use phrases that say tick this box if you want to opt OUT ...not in.

 

certainly having done insurance recently there are various boxes on many of the websites that you must tick to stop such and the English can purposefully be difficult to understand..

 

 

you could SAR them and get the sign up pages but i'd await and see if it all now stops.

[Migster]

The opt in/out boxes when you sign up on websites, typically relate to marketing material i.e. you are opting in/out to them contacting you with info of special offers, deals, etc. As I understand it, the company can still contact you about other matters and an email about their service, even if it is a survey from a third party, is allowed.