As a consumer, you are probably used to your cellphone beeping several times a day with a message promising lower insurance premiums, or having your dinner interrupted by a sales rep flogging timeshare. The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) passed in April gives the public a way to deal with nuisance marketing calls and messages.
As a consumer, you are probably used to your cellphone beeping several times a day with a message promising lower insurance premiums, or having your dinner interrupted by a sales rep flogging timeshare. The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) passed in April gives the public a way to deal with nuisance marketing calls and messages.
Under the Act, you will be able to opt out of receiving direct marketing. Companies that disregard your wish for privacy could be in for steep penalties if you report them to the National Consumer Commissioner. Under the new Act, the National Consumer Commission will be creating a database of consumers who do not want to receive junk email, spam or marketing SMS messages.
You’ll be able to sign up for it once it’s live. You should be free of nuisance marketers for good, if and when this database becomes a reality. If you don’t want to do a blanket opt-out for all direct marketing, you can simply instruct companies you don’t want to hear from to stop contacting you.
With severe penalties for non-compliance with the Consumer Protection Act, companies now have a good reason to respect your privacy, when many of them seemed to care little about your rights in the past. Tired of having flyers and brochures jamming up your postbox?
Ban junk mail
You are now able to place a "no junk mail" notice on your post box and no direct marketing materials may then be placed in or near your premises.
The Act also outlaws some other dodgy direct marketing practices. Negative option marketing is forbidden. This is when a company deems you to have entered into an agreement because you didn’t return goods sent to you that you never asked for in the first place.
Companies are also not allowed to bait you to visit their stores by promising amazing specials that don’t really exist – that means no more promises of a product way below its usual cost, when there actually isn’t stock in store, for example. You can also hopefully say goodbye to those timeshare scams that offer you wonderful prizes, when you actually have not entered or won a competition.
The Act contains many provisions that strengthen your rights as a consumer. It is worth becoming familiar with this Act, which is written in plain English, so that you become familiar with its clauses.
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