Notebooks R Us responds to ACMA spam warning

A manager at Notebooksrus Solutions has blamed a third party email database company which formerly managed the retailer's electronic mail-outs for alleged breaches of the Spam Act. 

The Australian Communications and Media Authority on Wednesday issued a formal warning to the Melbourne-based laptop retailer following an investigation that found the company in breach of the Spam Act 2003.

Gerard O'Neill, manager at Notebooksrus, told CRN that the ACMA warning came about after it engaged with a new company to manage and host newsletters.

"During a four month period of using this new company, who were meant to be experts at what they do, we experienced a lot of issues regarding our newsletter mail out.

"The company we used assured us many, many times that issues regarding the unsubscribe [service] were resolved.

"This was not the case and a few people could not unsubscribe," he said.

O'Neill said Notebooksrus ended the partnership with the company "as soon as it received the notification from ACMA."

He has not provided the name of the firm.

The Melbourne-based notebook retailer has 18,000 email addresses in its database which it communicates with every two or three weeks.

"In this ten year period, we had never received a complaint, until this one time and the problem has been resolved.

"We obviously do not want to send newsletters to people who do not want to receive it. We know that many [businesses] do and it's very annoying.

"We have always had the unsubscribe link on our newsletters as per the law.

"We are well aware of the ACMA rules regarding spam," he said.

Notebooksrus has since partnered with another company to manage its email data base, O'Neill said.

"We are very happy with their performance."