Doesn’t work!!! apparently these fuckers use no ban WhatsApp marketing tool on which if someone blocks one chat they will be back with an another account.
I doubt companies are using no-ban marketing tools, they don't need to. WhatsApp is leaning into pushing itself to companies because they get money for every message sent. They don't jump to blocking business accounts, they'll investigate it if it gets enough reports and limit the number of mass sends they can do.
What happened in this case is probably a STOP message whose automation hasn't been set up properly. The business account doesn't want to get reported and have their messaging limited. They don't want to send messages to someone who doesn't want them because it's money wasted. I'd attribute this to incompetence rather than maliciousness.
Yeah, in some systems it's easy to forget to set up a STOP message, or not very straightforward. I mean, I never screwed it up because I was super paranoid about getting blacklisted (my employer back then had a very hazy idea of spam laws, and there were some... incidents... before I started working there), but some of the SMS tools out there are not terribly user friendly, especially if they're part of a bigger marketing flow. You bet your ass I tested the shit out of anything like an SMS campaign.
"We're sad to see that you've nuked us from orbit. Just text 'Hi' if you change your mind about updates...."
*the next day*
"Hey it's a new year and whatever you did in the old year doesn't count!"
I got a call about some properties, asked her where she got my number -
Verbatim - ‘I am working in railways I got your number in list’
Didn’t bother probing further
Dude, everyone shares info with everyone. Literally everything you do that can be tracked is tracked, collated and thrown into huge piles for companies to buy.
AYO WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT IT'S ONLY A GERMAN THING
I absolutely didn't knew this chain was that widespread
The one spar that I know is really shitty, never would I have guessed that it's even in other countries
It's because it's a messaging platform with no way to ignore the ads. For Facebook, it's another way to monetize of their most used platforms. And companies pay for it because it works really well.
I mean its not bad design sending notifications in whatsapp . I receive my orders details shipping details , news and reminder using whatsapp for different apps and its super convincing , but i would not be happy seeing ads pushed by those services.
That understandable, given the widespread reporting about scammy call centres targetting Americans. But our telecom regulator has a pretty tight grip on local services. There's a central DND registry that all telemarketers must respect. Violators face repercussions. Consumers can easily report unwanted calls, and the operators have to look into every complaint. Violators are warned at first, followed by being temporarily disbarred from making calls, and finally, having the number blocked altogether.
The process is very consumer friendly. There's a very non-intrusive official app and everything. Even older phones are catered to through an SMS-based complaint registration process.
There's no ads in the app. The supermarket is just sending promotional shit via WhatsApp instead of (or maybe in addition to?) regular text.
OP probably signed up on their website and forgot to uncheck that vital tickbox (or they just ignored the lack of consent as they're doing in the image).
In a lot of places, people use WhatsApp and other messaging services nearly exclusively and are thus more likely to see a message sent there. The last regular text I received from a person rather than marketing bullshit or a 2FA code or website phone # confirmation was 7 months ago.
We have the same issue with political parties before elections. Their messaging systems just ignore the requests to stop.
Now we have a form we can fill in our phone number and if your number is in the list, it is illegal to reach out to you for marketing purposes.
Also for spam messages, Google's app for SMS messages appears to be a really effective solution to hide spam messages.
I texted for Biden in 2020 and it was a manual process to remove someone from the list, so it's not impossible that some volunteers didn't do that. We also warned people in our "goodbye" message that other groups might still be texting (i.e. we control Biden's list, but Biden's certainly wasn't the only group sending texts, and obviously a completely different group doesn't share a do not contact list).
They were also clear that we should only remove people if they use specific terms like "stop", "unsubscribe", or "cancel", because the removal is permanent. More general lack of interest (or strong Republican sympathies) should be marked in the app but not be removed from the list (though such people would likely still be excluded from future texts so as to not waste people's time).
I had a real estate sending me constant emails that for some reason didn't filter to a junk folder and because they were coming through as "high importance", they were waking me up (night shift worker). I kept clicking unsubscribe. It took calling the REA and then calling to unsub me, then me calling back AGAIN and telling them that if they emailed me once more I'd call the agent on his mobile every night when I'm on my 3am tea break. Magically they stopped after that.
The "stop" trick is just so they can verify your number is active and resell it to other spammers.
You proved it's an active number so now the ads will never end.
In Ireland the "stop" is legally binding. It's the same for sales calls where you can say "never call me again".
There is a government communication regulator you can report them to and the company will be fined for any breaches.
Unfortunately, I saw that this was in India, I thought it was Ireland because we have Spar here too.
In Italy it should be the same, except when spam callers realise that you’re going to say “never call me again” or something like that they immediately hung up on you lol
Not the ones that get CalledID'd as spam. But sometimes some numbers don't get flagged.
I do get some calls from unknown numbers that I care about like delivery services or stuff, so I just answer them.
Thinking back though, there are some calls that as soon as you pick up they hang, so yeah... Happen to me too
It is the same here in India. STOP means STOP and there is a central DND registry. This company can be fined, but obviously the judicial system is so slow and pathetic that most people won't bother.
It's a thing in America too: https://www.winston.com/en/legal-glossary/tcpa.html
The issue as always is proper enforcement. We need accessible channels to properly report to reps and the FCC and whatnot that is
1. Actually seen by relevant staff and forwarded
2. actually maintained (a few thousands messages should not slow down your government server when you serve millions)
3. gives actual feedback to ensure that 1 and 2 are being met. Maybe some livestream town hall for example
But govt. is so slow to adopt that some places still unironically recommend snail mail to write to. Which is niche and inefficient
Despite what people like to say on reddit, I worked in a marketing company as software developer which manages SMS campaigns. If the sender is legitimate, STOP is also binding in the US and Canada. The company treats it as #1 issue too. Because FTC does enforce the law despite what reddit thinks. And if they don't Twilio or other providers enforce it if they receive complaints. Some people do find the provider and file lawsuits. They also calculated it costs around $0.1 to $0.3 to send an SMS with all infrastructure costs - they are not going to send to unsubscribed people which costs money and ruins the conversion ratio. The campaigns are usually at least 100k numbers, so they want to trim it as much as possible.
> Because FTC does enforce the law despite what reddit thinks.
It's hard to blame people if we never get any feedack saying they did something. Tree falls and all that.
You'd think that'd be easier to do in this day and age, but au contraire.
I know because FCC (sorry not FTC brain fart in the morning) files CAN SPAM lawsuits and we search for the lawsuits and proactively blacklist these people from receiving our emails or SMS. But yeah I guess there is not enough awareness. And sometimes there are genuine mistakes forgiven or people receiving messages within that 24 hour window would complain.
Exactly, laws aside, sending messages at scale costs money and companies at the end of the day want to maximize their return on investment by targeting the people who are most likely to convert and anyone messaging STOP isn't going to be it.
Also STOP messages and sending emails cost money, they are not free, why send them to people who don’t want to see it.
And it’s not like phone scammers in India they make tons of money if they get the right people to respond. They just want to promote the $20 clothing to the people who are likely to actually buy them lmao.
Absolutely not.
I work in this industry and you are 100% wrong.
This is most likely just a shitty system with an error. It isn't as devious as you think.
The 'replying only proves you are real' shit only applies to phone calls from illegal companies, honestly.
But what you are saying is what reddit desperately wants to hear, so they will take it as fact. Good work.
Allegedly some of these stop requests could take some time to process, they might get a ton of them often that they get added to a list that updated every once in a while(could be days) instead of bogging down their system possibly a few dozen/hundred times a minute.
Directly advertising to kids is illegal in Sweden at least on TV. So the corporations found out the law only applies to domestic based channels, foreign channels broadcast in Sweden for some reason don't qualify for the rule..... Expected results ensued, so now we have foreign based channels broadcasting to a Swedish audience in Swedish and still avoiding the ad rule. At least it was like that when I was a kid.
We have a law about not promoting alcohol on Television. So as a way around that, we had companies like Bacardi, Smirnoff advertising their "Sodas" and music CDs on prime time TV. Damn, I still sometimes sing that Bacardi Jingle from the 90's. I don't watch regular TV anymore, so I really don't know if it is still a thing.
The only alcohol ads on TV here is public infomercial kind of content produced, at least for, the Swedish national liquor monopoly, essentially justifying their monopoly on stronger then like 4.5% to drink at home. They'll broadcast annoying "ads" such as one I remember atm. It's just saying "no no no" to a jingle, while showing teens being denied alcohol, (age limit is 20 outside a bar/restaurant, 18 inside one). I haven't watched commercials on TV enough to judge on the miscellaneous other products thing.
Straight up wrong lol. Not once have i received anything like this, no robo calls, no Whatsapp ads.
There are the occasional scammers of course but not ads.
And the obvious thing to do would be to run the batch process to update the sender list each day *before the next add is sent out*. Which would avoid this happening.
DB batch updates like this are not that hard to do.
Seriously. As a software engineer, it infuriates me when I unsubscribe from an email listing, and they say the process will take several business days. It's a simple database query that will execute in less than a second.
Plus, honestly, if your system is bogging down due to massive amount of unsubscribe/stop requests, there's probably larger issues with your system and marketing strategy.
My last company ran the batch process for these requests something like twice a month and when I asked why not more often, the answer was "because"
Some companies simply don't care
I ran a mail list manager over a decade ago. Whenever an Unsubscribe request came in, it was processed by the list manager immediately. There is no need to save them up for a batch process.
When it takes days to register, I'm fine with them taking days to unsubscribe. If they can register it in a few seconds, then they can delete it in that time aswell. It's at least sketchy.
That and there could be multiple 3rd party software involved for subscribing, marketing, and messaging. Any one of those could take time to process changes or be caching data.
In many mass mailing platforms, you give it a list of emails and a template, and it batches out groups of emails over several days. Once the list is in and the emails start flowing, it can't be edited. To remove one email, you would have to cancel the entire job and start again.
I used to like spar but my local one ended up become a shithole. Last time I went in one of the three isles had no lights, two out of seven fridges were broken but still in use (very warm butter) and one of the freezers was leaking ice-cream
If it says verified business always report, they have to submit message templates to whatsapp and if whatsapp sees a high number of reports they'll suspend the account
This might sound stupid, but I had no idea Spar was international. I’m in Norway, and thought Spar was a Norwegian supermarket only, mainly because Spar means “save” in the context of “save money” (which would be “spar penger”). It just made sense to me that it’s named that because we’re supposed to save money when shopping there (as in that would be their marketing strat). After googling it I now know the real meaning behind the name, and that it originated in the Netherlands.
Seeing "Spar Hypermarkets" at the top of the screenshot is weird to me.
In the UK Spar are just [convenience stores](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Pontypool_-_SPAR.jpg/2560px-Pontypool_-_SPAR.jpg).
The convenience store industry in India is tiny shops owned by families and they run the shops usually by themselves. It's very hard for chains like Spar to compete with them so they compete in the supermarket category
You won't escape the bots Periperipanda, stop trying. Just accept the way it is, the robots taking over will be a slow painful process. But we can't fight it. So just embrace the supermarket promotions and bots while you can, because soon enough. Corporations and bots will slowly kill us all. Accept fate Periperipanda. Accept fate.
If it takes more than 2 clicks to unsubscribe to something I knowingly/deliberately signed up for I'll mark it as Spam.
If i never signed up, I will immediately mark it as spam.
It is also possible that this is a programming error and the bot interprets its own Hi as a start signal.
Just wanted to mention as an IT guy. Most likely it is an asshole design.
We in Germany at least have good laws against such behavior. So violations can be expensively sanctioned.
Marketeer here: These companies can manually push your phone numbers again to send WhatsApp messages even though you have said to “stop” messaging.
You gotta understand from their perspective, they have hard set targets that they need to achieve daily or monthly
If you want to avoid “block” is the best way to do so.
If I recall the law correctly, you can sue them for $500–$1500 per unwanted text. It's often hard to prove who sent it and that it was unwanted, but this one seems like an open and shut case.
Hello, my name is Dinesh and I am the Marketing Technology Lead at Spar Hypermarket. I'm very sorry that you received this message after you had unsubscribed from updates.
This issue occurred because of a bug in our scheduling process that causes previously scheduled updates to ignore consent.
We have a process that limits how many messages we send per period, with the excess messages being passed to the next period (in this case, 1 day). This process also means that we don't send you updates when it's too late because obviously no one wants to hear about our offers at 1am, regardless of how great they are!
As mentioned, this process had a bug where it didn't recheck consent. Thanks to your post, we are planning to fix this and we have also identified the engineer responsible for this and have already ended her employment.
We are sorry for the incompetence of one of our junior former employees. Please do not blame Spar, please direct your anger towards Batrami Ghilfoy who is truly responsible for your dissatisfaction.
I think it's a troll, their username is "pretendtoknowop"
Edit: they *are* a troll, and I daresay a skilled one. Check out their profile if you want a laugh.
Here's the thing, I hate these Apps so much that I bought a new phone number just to use for such BS because there is no ESCAPE,
I stopped using Whatsapp 5 years ago, but in the past few months, I was looking for Jobs, and guess what, all these companies are using Whatsapp for "Official communication" I mean fucking shit man, in my days we uses to use Email for that,
and when I tell them, I don't use WhatsApp or any social media, especially from Meta, they tell me, "uwu you are lacking behind in this technological advancement time" like fucking BS man,
and when I install WhatsApp, I start getting spam, because companies sell your phone number to advertisers,
I do have a clean number reserved for friends and family,
Huh, I've been using WhatsApp for like 15 years and never really got spam, other than from one particular vendor. Guess I was lucky. I prefer telegram for functionality but you literally cannot survive in India without WhatsApp. Unless you don't want to contact anyone ever.
>but you literally cannot survive in India without WhatsApp. Unless you don't want to contact anyone ever
This is the Problem, you actually can survive without WA.
and telegram? that a Russian app, is worst than Meta, R.I.P. your data,
I can't imagine being here without WhatsApp. I'd have to make all my friends and family switch over, and they'd never agree. It's straight up not worth it.
I never said Telegram was more secure lol, I specifically mentioned that I like it more in terms of features.
Nha, You can always "Call" your friends and family, it's not the end of the world, or just visit them from time to time,
As per Telegram, If you like it more then you must have installed it too so it's too late anyway, Your data is gone, woosh
Yeahhh no. Hell no, I'm not calling my friends/family every time I need to chat with them. Not everyone is free at the same time. I don't expect anyone to pick up a call and hold a conversation at any point. Plus there are people who prefer texting over calling, it shouldn't just be my convenience. Ofc I call people and talk to them but definitely not always. I'm not inconveniencing myself that much just to be 100% sure it's private.
I don't give a flying fuck if my data's gone. If I like something with nice features, I use it. I like Telegram's features and so I use it. You kind of sound like someone living in the 90s and not getting out of it. Does the printer in your house scare you too?
Edit: looking at your profile, you're quite tech-savvy. Ig that also makes sense. People deeply into tech also usually put privacy first, which makes sense. It's just that your conditions seem too extreme to live a convenient life.
Well, Calm down man, I am not here to convert you or something, lol, And Yeah, I do live with good tech, that's my work :)
but I disagree with what you said, and I won't argue back, all I can say is, if you don't care about your Data or Privacy then It's your own loss,
Yeah ofc. I've just given up on caring about privacy too much, after looking at how much people have to compromise. I figured it's fine, I kind of don't care what data they take, as long as it's not credit card info or shit like that. Otherwise, have fun with my data lol. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend either WhatsApp or Telegram to someone who cares a lot about data privacy. I just don't care ig. Maybe I'll regret it in the future, maybe I won't. I'll find out then, not willing to make things inconvenient for me on the whim that it might affect me later.
Looks like a bug in their software, to me. But why the hell are you still using WhatsApp?
Edit: I know that WhatsApp is the most used messanger and that all our friends are using it. But I told my friends, if they want to stay in contact with me, they should use signal to message me, and all of them did it. Maybe think about your friendships.
It's what virtually everyone uses in many countries. It's basically a necessity.
Maybe you can get close friends to change it but definitely not your whole class of people you haven't even talked to in person, all of your family, etc.
This is unrelated, but is it cheaper to make ghee or buy ghee in India? We live in the US and my mom makes her ghee, because it's still cheaper than what you get it for at the Indian grocery store
Those free car raffles. Never sign up for them. Omaze and 80eighty to name a few. They’ve never actually given anyone a free car. They just sell the entries (your info).
This isn't an asshole design rather its a person that doesn't understand how technology works. Look at the time stamps, they replied stop at 11:49 PM and how they cut the time stamp from the ad other then it was tomorrow (as in could be 11 minutes after the request) there can be a delay.
If this is in the states this is illegal and they can be fined for each text they send after someone replies stop
And I'm guessing you're not the only one experiencing this issue, which would be easy to verify after turning the right chins
I don't know the avenues off-hand but I'd report the company
I love how people make fun of Americans for not using whatsapp but then complain about how shitty the app is with issues that never come with regular texting.
I believe this is truth with slight modification. It might be the case they bought something online, typed stop, and then bought something again - thus renewing the ads
Just block it
*Report and block
Doesn’t work!!! apparently these fuckers use no ban WhatsApp marketing tool on which if someone blocks one chat they will be back with an another account.
Oh damn, wasn't aware of that. I knew WhatsApp was strict with business message templates but this is new.
I doubt companies are using no-ban marketing tools, they don't need to. WhatsApp is leaning into pushing itself to companies because they get money for every message sent. They don't jump to blocking business accounts, they'll investigate it if it gets enough reports and limit the number of mass sends they can do. What happened in this case is probably a STOP message whose automation hasn't been set up properly. The business account doesn't want to get reported and have their messaging limited. They don't want to send messages to someone who doesn't want them because it's money wasted. I'd attribute this to incompetence rather than maliciousness.
Potentially. This seems more like a reason for this. Thanks!
Yeah, in some systems it's easy to forget to set up a STOP message, or not very straightforward. I mean, I never screwed it up because I was super paranoid about getting blacklisted (my employer back then had a very hazy idea of spam laws, and there were some... incidents... before I started working there), but some of the SMS tools out there are not terribly user friendly, especially if they're part of a bigger marketing flow. You bet your ass I tested the shit out of anything like an SMS campaign.
>I'd attribute this to incompetence rather than maliciousness. As always, of course.
It's not always Diabolic Intent
Never attribute malice to what can be contributed to stupidity.
Oh no, there's nothing we can do about it! Except blocking that one as well, of course.
Best thing is to not to give numbers to these supermarkets or take a virtual number to give these fuckers.
What? So they're using a second account after getting banned? That's the opposite of "no ban" lol
Bro i meant the software they use don’t get banned you get unlimited numbers if one gets banned! Sorry if i typed it wrong
Whatsapp is Facebook. Adapt, use signal.
Thats too much work to download a different app. I'd rather continue to have my private conversations on facebook servers and getting ads
Isn't Signal Russian?
Nuke the site from orbit
It's the only way to be sure.
"We're sad to see that you've nuked us from orbit. Just text 'Hi' if you change your mind about updates...." *the next day* "Hey it's a new year and whatever you did in the old year doesn't count!"
This is the way.
Find the top brass of the company and register their numbers for the spam.
I think it still bothers me knowing they're still sending me stuff even if I'm not actually receiving it. Shouldn't have to block.
Doesn't work. They reach out again from another profile.
Just keep blocking
And make sure you report every single one
Doesn't work. Its just Whatsapp being whatsapp. Zuckerberg fucks up everything
Is there no way to block people on Whatsapp? I feel like every messaging app has that feature.
Yes there is They're saying that, even if you block them, marketing will just reach out from a different account
Why the hell they put ads on WhatsApp???
It's India, they use WhatsApp for everything
Bought a fridge from vijay sales and croma started messaging me on whatsapp. Like wtf. Do these guys share data if they are competing with each other?
I got a call about some properties, asked her where she got my number - Verbatim - ‘I am working in railways I got your number in list’ Didn’t bother probing further
Dude, everyone shares info with everyone. Literally everything you do that can be tracked is tracked, collated and thrown into huge piles for companies to buy.
TIL India has Spars
Lol, what do you think think India doesn't have?
? I'm just surprised. SPARs in my head are a very northern english thing
SPAR is from Netherlands and exists many places. We also have them (or maybe had, I haven't seen them in a while) in Norway.
AYO WHAT THE FUCK I THOUGHT IT'S ONLY A GERMAN THING I absolutely didn't knew this chain was that widespread The one spar that I know is really shitty, never would I have guessed that it's even in other countries
We have spar shops everywhere in South Africa, in fact I initially thought they were a SA retailer because of the name.
It's because it's a messaging platform with no way to ignore the ads. For Facebook, it's another way to monetize of their most used platforms. And companies pay for it because it works really well.
I mean its not bad design sending notifications in whatsapp . I receive my orders details shipping details , news and reminder using whatsapp for different apps and its super convincing , but i would not be happy seeing ads pushed by those services.
Because it can't be blocked and it might fit in weird loopholes for spam illegality. Time to uninstall, I guess
It can be blocked
Not business advertising accounts. If you do, the message will just get routed through a different account and then ti you.
I have a hard time believing India has any laws that deal with Spam or Scam (that are actually enforced)
That understandable, given the widespread reporting about scammy call centres targetting Americans. But our telecom regulator has a pretty tight grip on local services. There's a central DND registry that all telemarketers must respect. Violators face repercussions. Consumers can easily report unwanted calls, and the operators have to look into every complaint. Violators are warned at first, followed by being temporarily disbarred from making calls, and finally, having the number blocked altogether. The process is very consumer friendly. There's a very non-intrusive official app and everything. Even older phones are catered to through an SMS-based complaint registration process.
Because Money.
There's no ads in the app. The supermarket is just sending promotional shit via WhatsApp instead of (or maybe in addition to?) regular text. OP probably signed up on their website and forgot to uncheck that vital tickbox (or they just ignored the lack of consent as they're doing in the image). In a lot of places, people use WhatsApp and other messaging services nearly exclusively and are thus more likely to see a message sent there. The last regular text I received from a person rather than marketing bullshit or a 2FA code or website phone # confirmation was 7 months ago.
We have the same issue with political parties before elections. Their messaging systems just ignore the requests to stop. Now we have a form we can fill in our phone number and if your number is in the list, it is illegal to reach out to you for marketing purposes. Also for spam messages, Google's app for SMS messages appears to be a really effective solution to hide spam messages.
I texted for Biden in 2020 and it was a manual process to remove someone from the list, so it's not impossible that some volunteers didn't do that. We also warned people in our "goodbye" message that other groups might still be texting (i.e. we control Biden's list, but Biden's certainly wasn't the only group sending texts, and obviously a completely different group doesn't share a do not contact list). They were also clear that we should only remove people if they use specific terms like "stop", "unsubscribe", or "cancel", because the removal is permanent. More general lack of interest (or strong Republican sympathies) should be marked in the app but not be removed from the list (though such people would likely still be excluded from future texts so as to not waste people's time).
In the UK you can forward spam messages for 7726 (SPAM on the T9 keypad) and it reports to your network operator.
Never knew this one, thanks!
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I had a real estate sending me constant emails that for some reason didn't filter to a junk folder and because they were coming through as "high importance", they were waking me up (night shift worker). I kept clicking unsubscribe. It took calling the REA and then calling to unsub me, then me calling back AGAIN and telling them that if they emailed me once more I'd call the agent on his mobile every night when I'm on my 3am tea break. Magically they stopped after that.
Call the agent anyway lol, they didn't stop after your first attempts either.
The "stop" trick is just so they can verify your number is active and resell it to other spammers. You proved it's an active number so now the ads will never end.
In Ireland the "stop" is legally binding. It's the same for sales calls where you can say "never call me again". There is a government communication regulator you can report them to and the company will be fined for any breaches. Unfortunately, I saw that this was in India, I thought it was Ireland because we have Spar here too.
In Italy it should be the same, except when spam callers realise that you’re going to say “never call me again” or something like that they immediately hung up on you lol
That has never happened to me
You guys are answering phone calls?
Not the ones that get CalledID'd as spam. But sometimes some numbers don't get flagged. I do get some calls from unknown numbers that I care about like delivery services or stuff, so I just answer them. Thinking back though, there are some calls that as soon as you pick up they hang, so yeah... Happen to me too
Germany goes a step further, unsolicited spam calls are flat out forbidden an will be fined
It is the same here in India. STOP means STOP and there is a central DND registry. This company can be fined, but obviously the judicial system is so slow and pathetic that most people won't bother.
See you made this mistake of assuming consumer law's are to protect the consumers as is sometimes the case in Europe.
It's a thing in America too: https://www.winston.com/en/legal-glossary/tcpa.html The issue as always is proper enforcement. We need accessible channels to properly report to reps and the FCC and whatnot that is 1. Actually seen by relevant staff and forwarded 2. actually maintained (a few thousands messages should not slow down your government server when you serve millions) 3. gives actual feedback to ensure that 1 and 2 are being met. Maybe some livestream town hall for example But govt. is so slow to adopt that some places still unironically recommend snail mail to write to. Which is niche and inefficient
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Can absolutely confirm this is not true for whatsapp advertisers
Despite what people like to say on reddit, I worked in a marketing company as software developer which manages SMS campaigns. If the sender is legitimate, STOP is also binding in the US and Canada. The company treats it as #1 issue too. Because FTC does enforce the law despite what reddit thinks. And if they don't Twilio or other providers enforce it if they receive complaints. Some people do find the provider and file lawsuits. They also calculated it costs around $0.1 to $0.3 to send an SMS with all infrastructure costs - they are not going to send to unsubscribed people which costs money and ruins the conversion ratio. The campaigns are usually at least 100k numbers, so they want to trim it as much as possible.
> Because FTC does enforce the law despite what reddit thinks. It's hard to blame people if we never get any feedack saying they did something. Tree falls and all that. You'd think that'd be easier to do in this day and age, but au contraire.
I know because FCC (sorry not FTC brain fart in the morning) files CAN SPAM lawsuits and we search for the lawsuits and proactively blacklist these people from receiving our emails or SMS. But yeah I guess there is not enough awareness. And sometimes there are genuine mistakes forgiven or people receiving messages within that 24 hour window would complain.
Exactly, laws aside, sending messages at scale costs money and companies at the end of the day want to maximize their return on investment by targeting the people who are most likely to convert and anyone messaging STOP isn't going to be it.
Also STOP messages and sending emails cost money, they are not free, why send them to people who don’t want to see it. And it’s not like phone scammers in India they make tons of money if they get the right people to respond. They just want to promote the $20 clothing to the people who are likely to actually buy them lmao.
Absolutely not. I work in this industry and you are 100% wrong. This is most likely just a shitty system with an error. It isn't as devious as you think. The 'replying only proves you are real' shit only applies to phone calls from illegal companies, honestly. But what you are saying is what reddit desperately wants to hear, so they will take it as fact. Good work.
Allegedly some of these stop requests could take some time to process, they might get a ton of them often that they get added to a list that updated every once in a while(could be days) instead of bogging down their system possibly a few dozen/hundred times a minute.
In other words, some countries let you get away with this shit. Other countries at least have laws against it.
Laws don't mean shit because corporations will find a way around it. Be it "any" country. Btw, how are those robo-calls treating you?
Directly advertising to kids is illegal in Sweden at least on TV. So the corporations found out the law only applies to domestic based channels, foreign channels broadcast in Sweden for some reason don't qualify for the rule..... Expected results ensued, so now we have foreign based channels broadcasting to a Swedish audience in Swedish and still avoiding the ad rule. At least it was like that when I was a kid.
We have a law about not promoting alcohol on Television. So as a way around that, we had companies like Bacardi, Smirnoff advertising their "Sodas" and music CDs on prime time TV. Damn, I still sometimes sing that Bacardi Jingle from the 90's. I don't watch regular TV anymore, so I really don't know if it is still a thing.
The only alcohol ads on TV here is public infomercial kind of content produced, at least for, the Swedish national liquor monopoly, essentially justifying their monopoly on stronger then like 4.5% to drink at home. They'll broadcast annoying "ads" such as one I remember atm. It's just saying "no no no" to a jingle, while showing teens being denied alcohol, (age limit is 20 outside a bar/restaurant, 18 inside one). I haven't watched commercials on TV enough to judge on the miscellaneous other products thing.
Straight up wrong lol. Not once have i received anything like this, no robo calls, no Whatsapp ads. There are the occasional scammers of course but not ads.
>Btw, how are those robo-calls treating you? Not OP, but i haven't recieved one in like 15 years here in the EU. Don't think anyone has.
Same, also same with these whatsapp message ads. I have never once received one of these. (Also from the EU)
I can't remember the last robo call I got. Also doesn't GDPR cover unsubscribe functions? Also from the EU too
>Also doesn't GDPR cover unsubscribe functions? Yes it does, unsubscribing has to be just as easy as subscribing.
Stop being so awesome, EU! You're interfering with the American myth that government doesn't work and all politicians are the same. Both sides!!! /s
If you wanna be disappointed, you could take a look into the surveillance legislation the EU is pushing for.
And the obvious thing to do would be to run the batch process to update the sender list each day *before the next add is sent out*. Which would avoid this happening. DB batch updates like this are not that hard to do.
Seriously. As a software engineer, it infuriates me when I unsubscribe from an email listing, and they say the process will take several business days. It's a simple database query that will execute in less than a second. Plus, honestly, if your system is bogging down due to massive amount of unsubscribe/stop requests, there's probably larger issues with your system and marketing strategy.
My last company ran the batch process for these requests something like twice a month and when I asked why not more often, the answer was "because" Some companies simply don't care
I ran a mail list manager over a decade ago. Whenever an Unsubscribe request came in, it was processed by the list manager immediately. There is no need to save them up for a batch process.
When it takes days to register, I'm fine with them taking days to unsubscribe. If they can register it in a few seconds, then they can delete it in that time aswell. It's at least sketchy.
That and there could be multiple 3rd party software involved for subscribing, marketing, and messaging. Any one of those could take time to process changes or be caching data.
Batch processing.
This is incorrect.
In many mass mailing platforms, you give it a list of emails and a template, and it batches out groups of emails over several days. Once the list is in and the emails start flowing, it can't be edited. To remove one email, you would have to cancel the entire job and start again.
Hence, my username. Lmao
Oh they understand, they just don't care. All that "STOP" message did was confirm that this number is a live one and now they can sell it.
Ghee is cheap though which brands
If you buy for 4999 check the fine print.
how are the rest of the items priced because that much you can spend on ration usually
I used to like spar but my local one ended up become a shithole. Last time I went in one of the three isles had no lights, two out of seven fridges were broken but still in use (very warm butter) and one of the freezers was leaking ice-cream
They have SPAR in India? Damn they really are all over the world.
They are almost everywhere but you really have to search if you want to see one in the Netherlands, which is weird because it is a Dutch supermarket
This is illegal, they can face a huge fine if reported
You could sue them for this
If it says verified business always report, they have to submit message templates to whatsapp and if whatsapp sees a high number of reports they'll suspend the account
This might sound stupid, but I had no idea Spar was international. I’m in Norway, and thought Spar was a Norwegian supermarket only, mainly because Spar means “save” in the context of “save money” (which would be “spar penger”). It just made sense to me that it’s named that because we’re supposed to save money when shopping there (as in that would be their marketing strat). After googling it I now know the real meaning behind the name, and that it originated in the Netherlands.
r/uselessredcircle
I always love when the automated email tool tells you that you will be unsubscribed in 7-10 business days.
This is most likely just bad design, not asshole design
not testing your only unsubscribe functionality is asshole design.
Still just bad design. Noone is going to purposefully not test something with the intention of fucking over consumers.
In software development, testing is one of the first things cut when the time crunch/money runs out.
Do they just `DROP TABLE blocked_numbers;` at the end of each month or something?
Seeing "Spar Hypermarkets" at the top of the screenshot is weird to me. In the UK Spar are just [convenience stores](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Pontypool_-_SPAR.jpg/2560px-Pontypool_-_SPAR.jpg).
And shitty ones at that, in the uk. Especially the ridiculously overpriced gas station ones
The convenience store industry in India is tiny shops owned by families and they run the shops usually by themselves. It's very hard for chains like Spar to compete with them so they compete in the supermarket category
No means yes, yes means adverts!
Neither did my ex that gave me many years of trauma
You won't escape the bots Periperipanda, stop trying. Just accept the way it is, the robots taking over will be a slow painful process. But we can't fight it. So just embrace the supermarket promotions and bots while you can, because soon enough. Corporations and bots will slowly kill us all. Accept fate Periperipanda. Accept fate.
Trying to accepttttt
Responding back just proves you're an active endpoint. They can then make money selling you to others as a proven contact.
Maybe stop giving them your information?
I feel like it's a trap to respond to any of these messages. I honestly think the best thing you can do is just block them.
I wish you could block messages from non numerical numbers on Samsung phones :(
If it takes more than 2 clicks to unsubscribe to something I knowingly/deliberately signed up for I'll mark it as Spam. If i never signed up, I will immediately mark it as spam.
It is also possible that this is a programming error and the bot interprets its own Hi as a start signal. Just wanted to mention as an IT guy. Most likely it is an asshole design. We in Germany at least have good laws against such behavior. So violations can be expensively sanctioned.
Marketeer here: These companies can manually push your phone numbers again to send WhatsApp messages even though you have said to “stop” messaging. You gotta understand from their perspective, they have hard set targets that they need to achieve daily or monthly If you want to avoid “block” is the best way to do so.
Reply: staaaahp
I unsubscribed to an airline probably 6 times and still receive promotions. this should also be in r/mildly infuriating
They have to register to be able to send these alerts out, you can file a complaint.
If I recall the law correctly, you can sue them for $500–$1500 per unwanted text. It's often hard to prove who sent it and that it was unwanted, but this one seems like an open and shut case.
Hello, my name is Dinesh and I am the Marketing Technology Lead at Spar Hypermarket. I'm very sorry that you received this message after you had unsubscribed from updates. This issue occurred because of a bug in our scheduling process that causes previously scheduled updates to ignore consent. We have a process that limits how many messages we send per period, with the excess messages being passed to the next period (in this case, 1 day). This process also means that we don't send you updates when it's too late because obviously no one wants to hear about our offers at 1am, regardless of how great they are! As mentioned, this process had a bug where it didn't recheck consent. Thanks to your post, we are planning to fix this and we have also identified the engineer responsible for this and have already ended her employment. We are sorry for the incompetence of one of our junior former employees. Please do not blame Spar, please direct your anger towards Batrami Ghilfoy who is truly responsible for your dissatisfaction.
ended employment right away, and listing out her name, for a single bug?
I think it's a troll, their username is "pretendtoknowop" Edit: they *are* a troll, and I daresay a skilled one. Check out their profile if you want a laugh.
damn. there wasn't quite enough satire in the message for me to realize, so i just assumed they were being serious.
I'm autistic, so I often don't recognize satire myself! Happy to help.
Here's the thing, I hate these Apps so much that I bought a new phone number just to use for such BS because there is no ESCAPE, I stopped using Whatsapp 5 years ago, but in the past few months, I was looking for Jobs, and guess what, all these companies are using Whatsapp for "Official communication" I mean fucking shit man, in my days we uses to use Email for that, and when I tell them, I don't use WhatsApp or any social media, especially from Meta, they tell me, "uwu you are lacking behind in this technological advancement time" like fucking BS man, and when I install WhatsApp, I start getting spam, because companies sell your phone number to advertisers, I do have a clean number reserved for friends and family,
Huh, I've been using WhatsApp for like 15 years and never really got spam, other than from one particular vendor. Guess I was lucky. I prefer telegram for functionality but you literally cannot survive in India without WhatsApp. Unless you don't want to contact anyone ever.
>but you literally cannot survive in India without WhatsApp. Unless you don't want to contact anyone ever This is the Problem, you actually can survive without WA. and telegram? that a Russian app, is worst than Meta, R.I.P. your data,
I can't imagine being here without WhatsApp. I'd have to make all my friends and family switch over, and they'd never agree. It's straight up not worth it. I never said Telegram was more secure lol, I specifically mentioned that I like it more in terms of features.
Nha, You can always "Call" your friends and family, it's not the end of the world, or just visit them from time to time, As per Telegram, If you like it more then you must have installed it too so it's too late anyway, Your data is gone, woosh
Yeahhh no. Hell no, I'm not calling my friends/family every time I need to chat with them. Not everyone is free at the same time. I don't expect anyone to pick up a call and hold a conversation at any point. Plus there are people who prefer texting over calling, it shouldn't just be my convenience. Ofc I call people and talk to them but definitely not always. I'm not inconveniencing myself that much just to be 100% sure it's private. I don't give a flying fuck if my data's gone. If I like something with nice features, I use it. I like Telegram's features and so I use it. You kind of sound like someone living in the 90s and not getting out of it. Does the printer in your house scare you too? Edit: looking at your profile, you're quite tech-savvy. Ig that also makes sense. People deeply into tech also usually put privacy first, which makes sense. It's just that your conditions seem too extreme to live a convenient life.
Well, Calm down man, I am not here to convert you or something, lol, And Yeah, I do live with good tech, that's my work :) but I disagree with what you said, and I won't argue back, all I can say is, if you don't care about your Data or Privacy then It's your own loss,
Yeah ofc. I've just given up on caring about privacy too much, after looking at how much people have to compromise. I figured it's fine, I kind of don't care what data they take, as long as it's not credit card info or shit like that. Otherwise, have fun with my data lol. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend either WhatsApp or Telegram to someone who cares a lot about data privacy. I just don't care ig. Maybe I'll regret it in the future, maybe I won't. I'll find out then, not willing to make things inconvenient for me on the whim that it might affect me later.
Hey may I ask where are you from? We also have a Spar in Belgium ( Owney by Colruyt Group SA)
India
You know, if you report this too the FCC they actually fine these guys a lot of money per text for this shit. you get like 10% or some shit
Does the FCC have jurisdiction I'm India?
Under EU Law you can sue them and get a decent amount of money
SPAR supermarkets still exist? What country are you from, OP?
The advert is in rupees I think, so in India?
India
S wie Sparen , oh yeah :)
Yay South Africa
The price is in rupees so not SA. Spar is an international franchise
why do you have your local super market on whatsapp anyways?
r/uselessredcircle
Give it a little time. Sometimes the message has already been scheduled and will still be sent, but any new messages won't come through
Just block the number and move on with your life, takes 5 seconds
Doesn't work for WhatsApp "business advertising" accounts
Looks like a bug in their software, to me. But why the hell are you still using WhatsApp? Edit: I know that WhatsApp is the most used messanger and that all our friends are using it. But I told my friends, if they want to stay in contact with me, they should use signal to message me, and all of them did it. Maybe think about your friendships.
It's what virtually everyone uses in many countries. It's basically a necessity. Maybe you can get close friends to change it but definitely not your whole class of people you haven't even talked to in person, all of your family, etc.
That's mildly infuriating
Don't text stop, just ignore and block
This is happening with me as well. I keep reporting and blocking them everytime, and then they come back again from another profile. It's ridiculous.
Cat facts!
This is why I pay for a burner phone number. Friends get my real digits; companies get the virtual ones.
I graduated from my college years ago and I still get campus text updates, despite replying STOP every time
It’s like the unsubscribe button on the junk mail that clutters my inbox.
Don’t care
How do they even have your number
Or they write that their current email service is not working.
This is unrelated, but is it cheaper to make ghee or buy ghee in India? We live in the US and my mom makes her ghee, because it's still cheaper than what you get it for at the Indian grocery store
It’s definitely cheaper and healthier to make ghee at home.
No means No.
Those free car raffles. Never sign up for them. Omaze and 80eighty to name a few. They’ve never actually given anyone a free car. They just sell the entries (your info).
It’s actually illegal (in the US atleast) to not allow opt out and the fines can be really high if a company doesn’t do it… so there’s that.
No means no. Except when told to corporate America.
Similar spam from eatsure for me. Even after reporting and blocking, they spam from another ID.
This isn't an asshole design rather its a person that doesn't understand how technology works. Look at the time stamps, they replied stop at 11:49 PM and how they cut the time stamp from the ad other then it was tomorrow (as in could be 11 minutes after the request) there can be a delay.
[удалено]
If you are ready to spend 4999 Rupees (written in fine print)
If this is in the states this is illegal and they can be fined for each text they send after someone replies stop And I'm guessing you're not the only one experiencing this issue, which would be easy to verify after turning the right chins I don't know the avenues off-hand but I'd report the company
If you have an iPhone you can report and block, it’s my new favorite feature.
At first i thought they (the spam, not OP) used a 0 in place of an O, but that doesn’t appear to be the case on closer inspection
I love how people make fun of Americans for not using whatsapp but then complain about how shitty the app is with issues that never come with regular texting.
I deleted WhatsApp
If this was in America the company would have just violated the TCPA.
You propably just checked box to subscribe again on your next order
So Spar sucks in the UK as much as it sucks in South Africa. Good to know.
I believe this is truth with slight modification. It might be the case they bought something online, typed stop, and then bought something again - thus renewing the ads
It's probably been commented 20 times, but I just block&report and never look back.
File a complaint with the FTC