[News] Drowning under GDPR emails

[Brovion]

As that maybe, BUT I have been with the company for 8 months, the company can and will get rid of people for not abiding by their rules and regulations, the company ARE a major national company who can and will dispose of people as and when IF you / me / they / we /us DON'T follow their rules and regulations......I am 63 years old, I still have a mortgage and other large outgoings, hence I have to carry on working till i drop, very likely!

Whilst I totally and completely DISAGREE with what I was told at this meeting, I am far from in a position to take them on in ANY legal or moral or whatever else style jargon anyone wants to use....so........I will HAVE to abide by their ignorant / miss informed / crap stupid WRONG rules on the basis I really need to pay my mortgage on a monthly basis! like many people in this country I am a month away from technically being homeless, at 63 I would rather do as they say however miss informed they maybe.

This reply is not meant at you personally, sorry if it reads like that, it is not, that I promise.

Not taken personally at all and I completely understand your position.

 

[Dick Swiveller]

As someone who has been dragged into GDPR late on, I don't know the full ins and outs but my understanding is that you can't offer undue incentive for people to opt in. Given there are a few people on here who have dealt with it a lot more than me, what do you make of this?

1. This prize draw is only open to UK residents aged 18 years or over who would like to receive marketing communications from companies within the Thomas Cook group. Any person that opts-in to receive marketing e-mails either directly though Thomascook.com Sign-up page, or in response to an e-mail invitation to update current marketing preferences will qualify for entry to the prize draw.


My understanding is you can do this if you enter everyone who updates their preferences, be it in or out, but this is definitively only for people who say yes. To me, this is a massive risk but have I missed something?

 

[hitony]

You really do need to go and have a lie down.

When you typed your incredible reply, I was lying down, i was asleep.

 

[hitony]

Apparently I have to document and list the contents of the10s of thousands emails, spreadsheet and word documents I have lying around on my networks. I can't delete them. Those I want to delete I have to move to a special drive, and somebody else is supposed to analyse those I think should be deleted, decide on my behalf, and delete them for me.

Whether this is what is actually required or not is immaterial - it is unworkable and complete bollocks. I may just "accidently" delete everything, and when somebody wants a copy of an e-mail from 5 years ago (as they did yesterday), I will tell them where they have stuck it.

You really do need to go and have a lie down.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

Right, we had a meeting today, I am going to give a very simple but factual example of how it is supposedly (not) going to work for us.....I build new houses by the way...

Scenario......Mrs White rings into customer services, her kitchen door handle is sticking and won't function properly...........At this point we would issue the defect / snag to our Carpenter for that site, give him Mrs Whites contact details (Phone / E mail address etc) he will contact her make an appointment and rectify the issue.....

What we were told today.........We (company) write (must be a letter as an e mail can be doctored etc) to Mrs White asking her if we can give our Carpenter her contact details, we also explain she MUST write back to us (stamped address envelope included in the out bound letter) giving us permission, a form is included as well...........we then forward the details to the carpenter who has to abide by her contact rules and hopefully arranges an appointment.

Now, Mrs Whites door handle is really not a major issue, as I asked, what do we do when Mr Brown rings up saying he has water leaking through his ceiling very likely to do with a copper / plastic pipe issue.......... After they looked at each other.......I suggested that maybe we used "next day delivery mail" as by then hopefully only the downstairs will be ruined!!

It is all bollocks!!!!! as is the anal claim world we live in!!! CRAP!!

I shouldn't think the customers are so bothered about the email as the minimum two month delay in doing anything about whatever issue's cropped up, as seems to be the case with most housebuilders.

 

[hitony]

I shouldn't think the customers are so bothered about the email as the minimum two month delay in doing anything about whatever issue's cropped up, as seems to be the case with most housebuilders.

Personally I have never had a customer wait 2 months for any remedial work, I don't know who your builders are, but I very much doubt that it is the company that I work for, there are ways of forcing builders (Developers) into speeding up doing snags, I have in the past helped many people to do this. There is also a way to complain to developers.

 

[A mex eyecan]

According to the ICO documentation you are able to market your products to customers who have purchased before under what is known as the soft opt in. This is based on the fact that the customer may well be interested in similar products or services. This also applies to customers that haven’t previously purchased but have been provided with a quote or shown an interest in a product or service you sell

that's helpful, don't suppose you happen to know where that is buried in the icon document guides do you?

 

[Surrey Phil]

Ok. Whilst a small company, we embraced GDPR. We have a lovely 3 page GDPR notice which is now on our website. We have designed some lovely forms should people want to know what data we hold on them and if they want us to delete it. We have added GDPR riders to all email auto signatures. That’s it, we’re GDPR ready!

To do this two of us went on a one day GDPR course, we’ve spent hours preparing and producing documents etc. The net result. We still continue to use the data as we’ve always done. What total bollocks all this is!

 

[A mex eyecan]

the whole process i find means that as i answer one question about how we can handle customers data it creates another 5 questions.

Here's some examples,
1/ we have emailed everyone on our databases who receive the very occasional email promotion on a product, or on a new product that may happen along, asking them to reply to our email saying they wish to continue to get those by opt in.

2/ we have for years emailed the majority of invoices and statements to customers using addresses that have been provided to us. Can we still use these or do we gain their consent to carry on in this way?

3/ sales people want to email a quote to a prospect, now need to get the prospect to tick a quote request form confirming that's ok.

4/ New customer account applications are typically completed by an authorised signatory of application customer/prospect. This details accounts contact etc and where invoices should be emailed to. In many cases that email is different to the person completing the form. So who gives consent for us the email the invoices? The person filling in the form or the person who's email address the applicant has advised us to send them to?

5/ and in a few weeks after we've done all this we get a phone call from Mary in accounts telling us she is leaving and Eddie should now have the invoices emailed to his address.
Q/ how do we process this? I assume we have to inform Mary that this request has to be made in writing/email. But how do we get Eddies consent as we have not previously been given consent to email him?

oh my, thank Heavens retirement is getting nearer. I liken that to the sun rising, every day the sun gets bigger and brighter, my retirement will be MY time to sunbathe.

any help to some of these Q's (not the retirement) gratefully received

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Everything will grind to a halt on 25/5. Good idea in theory, nightmare in reality

 

[timbha]

Everything will grind to a halt on 25/5. Good idea in theory, nightmare in reality

no it won't. It'll carry on as usual with some organisations complying and others not. The only thing that will happen is the (Teflon) consultants and project teams will move onto something else leaving firms to pick up the pieces.

 

[Dorset Seagull]

that's helpful, don't suppose you happen to know where that is buried in the icon document guides do you?

It’s on the Direct Marketing guide. If you can’t find it PM me and I’ll send over a pdf

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

no it won't. It'll carry on as usual with some organisations complying and others not. The only thing that will happen is the (Teflon) consultants and project teams will move onto something else leaving firms to pick up the pieces.

Decent chance for the ambulance chasers to find some fault in all this now the ppi gravy train is almost at its destination

 

[Bodian]

Someone at your company.........." loopholes.

Thanks for all this - really useful and interesting. Our place has run a dozen or so GDPR training sessions now. I've avoided them on the basis that we had all this hoo-hah when the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information Act came out. I just carried on as before, and....nothing has happened.

I suspect this might be the same!

 

[timbha]

Decent chance for the ambulance chasers to find some fault in all this now the ppi gravy train is almost at its destination

once again, consultants and project teams (did they take an Agile approach?!!) making a fortune whilst adding little value, Now it's the turn of the lawyers

 

[Paulie Gualtieri]

Right, we had a meeting today, I am going to give a very simple but factual example of how it is supposedly (not) going to work for us.....I build new houses by the way...

Scenario......Mrs White rings into customer services, her kitchen door handle is sticking and won't function properly...........At this point we would issue the defect / snag to our Carpenter for that site, give him Mrs Whites contact details (Phone / E mail address etc) he will contact her make an appointment and rectify the issue.....

What we were told today.........We (company) write (must be a letter as an e mail can be doctored etc) to Mrs White asking her if we can give our Carpenter her contact details, we also explain she MUST write back to us (stamped address envelope included in the out bound letter) giving us permission, a form is included as well...........we then forward the details to the carpenter who has to abide by her contact rules and hopefully arranges an appointment.

Now, Mrs Whites door handle is really not a major issue, as I asked, what do we do when Mr Brown rings up saying he has water leaking through his ceiling very likely to do with a copper / plastic pipe issue.......... After they looked at each other.......I suggested that maybe we used "next day delivery mail" as by then hopefully only the downstairs will be ruined!!

It is all bollocks!!!!! as is the anal claim world we live in!!! CRAP!!

Do you work for Persimmons?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Hampster Gull]

once again, consultants and project teams (did they take an Agile approach?!!) making a fortune whilst adding little value, Now it's the turn of the lawyers

If companies complied with the law then no or few lawyers involved. Good news for all. If companies decide their profits override the law then yes, lawyers will have a field day.

 

[Bry Nylon]

GDPR = the new Y2K

Huge panic. Some people make a load of £ for doing very little. But then the sun comes up the next day and everything carries on as before.

 

[Hampster Gull]

GDPR = the new Y2K

Huge panic. Some people make a load of £ for doing very little. But then the sun comes up the next day and everything carries on as before.

Nothing to see if companies respect the law. If they haven’t or have left it late then yes they are easy pickings

 

[Dorset Seagull]

Even ICO admit they are more interested in educating rather than prosecuting. How the hell would they be able to chase after the thousands of companies that will probably inadvertently not comply for some reason or even those that just ignore it. Typical EU bullshit and red tape which could have prevented the spammers etc with a more simplistic approach.