Two member companies named in a recent Direct Marketing Association press release about members expelled for failure to comply with its Privacy Promise, have said the association had “harassed” and “threatened” them over compliance.
Ted O’Meara, a spokesman for Portland Newspapers, which opted not to renew its membership in July, said letters from the DMA were negative and threatening, referring to statements in the letter that noncompliance would bring public disclosure.
A second company, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, called the DMA’s telephoning and mail campaign harassment.
DMA spokesperson, Stephen Altobelli, said the DMA has been talking about compliance with members for two years. “We made it clear that signing the promise was a requirement of membership and that failure to sign the promise would result in expulsion and there would be publicity to that effect.”
Altobelli declined to provide DIRECT Newsline with a copy of any letters sent but did say the “letter made it clear that we were going to be issuing a press release and publishing our actions.”
Randee Sacks, a spokeswoman for Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business, said the school’s executive education division had in fact resigned its membership Friday and was not expelled from the association as the DMA had suggested in its press release.
Sacks said the organization takes privacy issues very seriously and joined the DMA about a year ago to tap its resources, including training and development, but found that it did not make use of the association the way it had anticipated.
She added that signing an agreement such as the Promise “is a very extensive legal process for us to go through,” with multiple levels of approval, and when the DMA began its intensive campaign to ensure compliance, the division chose to resign.
‘The truth is we really have felt harassed over the last few weeks as we have been approached about the Privacy Promise,” Sacks said. “We felt harassed by them to point that we said it’s just not worth it.”
Altobelli said that since Jan 1, the school had received five phone calls and “several” letters.
Sacks said she was “surprised” by the negative tone of the DMA’s official announcement released Monday evening, which stated that the school had belatedly indicated that it has a policy not to sign such agreements and would be expelled Nov. 30. Sacks said the division resigned its membership Friday and called the DMA Monday morning to ensure they received the notice.
Portland Newspapers opted not to renew its membership when it expired in July because it determined that it could not technologically comply with the Promise’s suppression policy, O’Meara said.
“We looked at the Privacy Promise and we saw that there was one element that we could not guarantee compliance with, so we decided that at the time our renewal was due we would not renew,” O’Meara said.
He added that the paper “fully complies” with customer requests to opt out and respects all privacy issues.
A cataloger, Sportsman’s Market Inc., also cited in the press release as being expelled, said in a statement last week that it had declined to sign the Promise since its “company policy has always been and continues to be that any customer privacy request is immediately honored.”
