We had an email at stopthejunkmail.com this past week from Williams-Sonoma letting us know that they will not be honoring our opt out requests since our service is not “…convenient, trustworthy and provided free of charge….”

After 8 years of honoring our requests we are no longer a preferred 3rd party because we charge for our service. As for trustworthy we are members of the BBB, a trusted mark in any business.

Williams-Sonoma go on to state that “…we honor mail preference requests from the following third party resources… DMA and Catalog Choice“. Because we are not backed by the government nor by other charitable organizations we are penalized for trying to keep our business up and running in a recession . The biggest losers will be our members.

In the same breathe they then state emphatically that they are:

“… deeply committed to respecting our customers’ privacy and personal communication preferences. As such, we honor catalog mail preference requests expressed by our customers directly through any of the following sources: via direct email, via the mail preference service on each brand web site, or directly to any of our customer care centers.” It appears they are being selective with customer preferences not committed.

After saying all of that they then inform us that stopthejunkmail.com can go online on behalf of our members and update their Catalog Mailing preferences! To me it sounds like they are being plain lazy.

BTW: The DMA is not a free service, Williams-Sonoma pay a large fee to be member of the DMA but it is however free to the consumer. The DMA collects consumer info via the Mail Preference Service and in 3 years probably uses this consumer data for new marketing campaigns. Catalog Choice are now offering a shopping service for catalogs. In the long run it seems that the DMA and Catalog Choice are actually collecting opt-ins!

So who benefits here? Williams-Sonoma mostly, the DMA definitely and Catalog Choice possibly, Consumer marginally.

Margot