In my most recent case I received such a packet 6 days after the date they said they activated the service. I called the same day and told the agent I wanted to cancel my trial subscription, citing specifically that I did not want the service and refused the terms of the agreement. The retention script (which is the same no matter which agent you talk with) is, "well you can keep the trial going and it will just expire", and repeat it several times. You have to be persistent and use the language "cancel my subscription", or you will get nowhere.
To be clear, I do not think any of my efforts will get my contact info out of their databases. Auto purchases are recorded publicly (at least in my state).
My comment above was about the extent to which Sirius, as a company, puts up hurdles to protect their nuisance practices, including shrouding them with legal claims that they will defend at the highest levels of jurisprudence. They lost their case in 2014 and updated the language in their agreement, presumably to address the weakness of their previous agreement, since it still claims to bind the customer without any action on their part.
In any case, I do not want to derail this thread any further.
Since most appliance manufacturers require you registering your product with them for warranty service, yes, please take care of that for me (many appliance stores do). Now _should_ Maytag require that registration? If it makes for a quicker and smoother warranty service process then I'm okay with it - better than needing to dig up a receipt in three years, only to find that the thermal printing has faded.
Manufacturers legally have to honor their warranty regardless of you giving them your information. They don’t exactly say you won’t be covered by warranty if you don’t “register”, because they legally can’t.
The idea that a AWS or Aszure market place with third parties involved is different than say my example, an App store with third parties seems like a good way to think about it.
I'm not justifying the policy, but I am noting the context isn't that different and how we should think about it.
For warranty purposes of course
> You buy soap from Walmart. They send your name and address to Johnson & Johnson.
In case they need to recall the soap
> You buy a sandwich at your local deli. They send your name and address to Boar’s Head. Cool?
So you can get some cool Boar's Head swag!
Just kidding of course. We need much better data privacy protection.
I can’t even imagine what that might be. But technical support for my sandwich making needs would be fun. Kind of how Butterball (I think it’s them) has a help line on Thanksgiving for cooking turkeys. They made the news a few years ago by hiring men to work the phones because they learned that men cook more frequently now but feel uncomfortable asking women for advice. I had a good chuckle at that.
A mounted boar's head to mount on the wall that makes grunting sounds when it's sammich time. But being HN, it'll also have cameras for eyes (3d) and microphones in the ears so that it knows when it is time to re-order more product. Maybe it'll link with Alexa/Siri/GHome with an articulated mouth so that it makes it look like it is Alexa. If you place it where it can see the contents of your fridge and/or pantry, it will be able to automatically order food for you.
The lack of imagination these days... /s
I mean, you do anything for long enough, you get good at it. Especially if you're soliciting feedback from even more people who are doing it.
I think somewhere out there there's a story of a Brita customer support rep tracking down a filtration engineer to get a technical answer to how long one could filter and drink urine for.
If you bought one, your information was shared with the entity ("Radiotjänst") in charge of collecting the mandatory TV fee (funding public service radio and TV programming).
The fee is now collected as tax instead, so that's no longer the case.
Again, think of the grocery store example: you go in, there is a Boar's Head counter where they sell sandwiches. You grab a sandwich and head to the checkout line. You pay the grocery store worker who is wearing a grocery store shirt and get a grocery store receipt that says you just bought a $5 sandwich and used your grocery store loyalty card. Do you expect that Boar's Head will get the details of your loyalty card, which sandwich you bought, what else you bought, etc. even if the back of the receipt says in fine print that the grocery store may share that information with someone?
If Boar's Head had their own clerk and their own cash register you'd be doing business with them. But then it would be clear cut, right? The fact that the grocery store is processing the payments and presenting it as essentially they are reselling Boar's Head products would imply that Boar's Head is not involved in your individual transaction.
If this is a service you are buying from Boar's Head but they simply use the grocery store's cash registers, accounting, inventory, etc. then I would argue it's on the grocery store and Boar's Head to make it crystal clear who you are doing business with, or else you run into situations like this. And if a situation like the one that started this whole debacle happens, their response should be "We are sorry. We never made it crystal clear why we get this information. You see, we are partners with the grocery store and when you buy our delicious sandwiches from your local Piggly Wiggly you are actually doing business with us. We know it's in the grocery store's TOS, but we think it should be clear that you are actually our customer as well when you transact business with them for our goods. This is to provide benefits X, Y, and Z. If you don't want to do business with both Piggly Wiggly and us, here are some alternatives to get our delicious sandwiches elsewhere and some recipes to make your own. In addition, this incident happened because our sales staff was not properly trained on how we should use our customer data. We are going to review our privacy policies and publish an update in six weeks or sooner with what we will be doing going forward. If you have any concerns, please contact me directly. XOXO CEO of Boar's Head."
It's OK for the grocery store to see my data for because I explicitly consented for them to do that when I gave them my name and address when I filled out the loyalty form. Same way that I need to give some info to Azure to create an account, right? They aren't an anonymous service. But it's an active opt-in situation. You give them your info. They don't just take it.