My wife and I were shocked last month to receive a privacy statement from Cendant Corp.
For one thing, we were mortified to learn that we were doing business with Cendant at all. We weren’t aware of it, and it sure didn’t do anything for our self-esteem.
For another, we couldn’t understand the tacky little self-mailer, which arrived around July 6 (well after the July 1 deadline for sending the notices required by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act). I felt like spouting Groucho Marx’s old line: “Why, a 4-year-old child could figure this out. Go out and find me a 4-year-old child, because I can’t make head nor tail of it.”
Now I write about direct marketing for a living, and have at least a passing knowledge of Gramm-Leach-Bliley. But what sense would the following make to a person who doesn’t?
We may share personal information relating to your transactions or experience with us, with our affiliates, such as the other membership services operated by Cendant Membership Services, Inc., and its affiliates, as well as with affiliated financial institutions and other affiliates (including those existing currently or in the future).
The worst thing is that Cendant isn’t mentioned until the fifth paragraph and not again until the address for opting out is given at the end. And the firm never mentions just which program this is all about (which we still haven’t figured out).
In any event, they should have hired a copywriter to tweak this dreadful stuff. Not that Cendant is the only one that hasn’t.
“The banks don’t speak English, and we think they do it on purpose,” Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, recently told Reuters. “They are hiding your right to say ‘no’ behind pages and pages of unintelligible gibberish.”
Conservative columnist William Safire has also blasted the lack of clarity in these statements, hundreds of millions of which have been mailed out. But Safire has another problem with them.
“Unless you assume the burden of ‘opting out’ by filling out a form, finding a stamp and mailing it back, the bank can share all your private dealings with any affiliates or marketer or just about anybody,” he wrote.
Yes, but that’s the point. We don’t mind Chase Manhattan, with whom we have an excellent long-term relationship, sharing information on us. But we do worry about Cendant giving it to affiliates or affiliates of affiliates (those existing currently or in the future).
And so Cendant’s privacy notice is useful after all (now that we’ve figured it out). It lets us say this:
Please don’t share our personal information.
