NatWest has tried to blame another systems cock-up after it sent out hundreds of marketing emails to customers who had specifically asked not to receive them – with one customer still targeted despite opting out three times.
The issue emerged after an email campaign, promoting NatWest’s CashBackPlus service, triggered a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority. This in turn led the RBS-owned bank to confess that more than 340 customers who had unsubscribed still got the email.
NatWest confirmed it had received unsubscribe instructions from customers and that those email addresses had then been removed from its marketing database. However, it claimed a “programming error” had overwritten those instructions and consequently those customers had been included in subsequent mailings.
The complainant, who was also among four customers who contacted the bank directly about the issue, had unsubscribed three times between late March and early May, but had continued to receive emails.
Describing the error as “unfortunate”, the ASA concluded that RBS had breached the advertising code in three areas of database practice.
It warned the company to ensure it did not send marketing communications to customers who had asked not to receive them, and to ensure that it suppressed customers’ personal information from marketing databases when asked.
This is the second time in nearly as many months that RBS has been a victim of a technical glitch. In July, the group was forced to admit Edinburgh staff were responsible for a failure which triggered uproar among the 17 million customers of RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank, when a system upgrade locked some of them out of their accounts for nearly two weeks.
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Charlie says: “When will companies learn that opt-out is there for a reason – to stop pissing off your customers. The fact that only one person complained to the ASA is a miracle or maybe just symptomatic of a lack of awareness about who to complain to. The real issue, however, is how many other firms are failing to take on board their customers’ wishes?”