About a year ago, I bought a Pottery Barn Kids gift for my nephew's baby shower and last night, I got a marketing email in my box. I hadn't seen this technique before. As far as I know, it doesn't violate the 2003 CAN-SPAM act, but boy, it sure paints the fence gray.For reference, here's the relevant passage:Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way thats easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesnt block these opt-out requests.I mean, boy, they sure did that. This seems like dangerous PR territory though. Is anyone else using this technique? Have you heard much about it? Is it a growing trend or just a dirty trick?Requiring a person to call a physical location to be taken off a mailing list seems like a great way to end up on every spam blacklist in a matter of weeks.
So I just got a Pottery Barn email that required I call the store to be removed
spam;marketing;bulk email
Its a bad business move, and you could still sue them. If you reply to that email and they don't honor your request to be removed, and keep emailing you, then they are in  dangerous waters. The danger is that they are continuing to contact you after you requested removal. It will be hard for them to prove that you didn't try to call that number and the burden will be on them if you can show that you repeatedly emailed them to request no more spam. Also it specifically says: Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a  menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but  you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you.  Make sure your spam filter doesnt block these opt-out requests.It specifically says this: You must honor a recipients opt-out request within 10 business days.  You cant charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any  personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make  the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or  visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for  honoring an opt-out request.Its also a bad move because requiring everyone to call in will cost them a lot of money in customer service requests.