Woolworths fined $1 million after spamming customers with emails

The supermarket giant has been slapped with the largest ever penalty for spamming violations, twice as large as the previous record.

Woolworths has been slapped with a $1 million fine from the communications watchdog after the supermarket giant sent a massive amount of emails to customers who had previously unsubscribed.

It was found the retailer breached spam laws five million times by continuing to send marketing material to consumers who had asked for it to stop, the Australian Communications and Media Authority says.

The massive flow of emails were sent between October 2018 and July 2019, invoking the largest penalty issued by the watchdog.

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“The spam rules have been in place for 17 years and Woolworths is a large and sophisticated organisation,” ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said. “The scale and prolonged nature of the noncompliance is inexcusable.

“Woolworths failed to act even after the ACMA had warned it of potential compliance issues after receiving consumer complaints.”

Ms O’Loughlin said the watchdog found the supermarket giant’s systems, processes and practices were inadequate to fairly comply with the spam rules first introduced in 2003.

“Australians have the right to unsubscribe from marketing emails that they do not want to receive,” she said.

Woolworths has agreed to pay a $1 million fine. Picture: Dean Lewins/AAP

“In this case, consumers claimed that they had tried to unsubscribe on multiple occasions or for highly personal reasons, but their requests were not actioned by Woolworths because of its systems, processes and practices.

“The ACMA’s actions should serve as a reminder to others not to disregard customers’ wishes when it comes to unsubscribing from marketing material.”

Woolworths blamed the breach on a systems error which failed to identify individual members opting out of the marketing material because a huge portion of the emails were shared between an entire household.

When one member of the family asked to be unsubscribed, Woolies kept sending the emails to the same address assuming another member of family still wanted to receive them, the company says.

“We respect the right of our Rewards members to choose how and when we communicate with them and apologise for failing to act on all unsubscribe requests as required under the law,” WooliesX Managing Director Amanda Bardwell said in a statement provided to news.com.au.

“Many of the breaches were the result of technical and systems issues, which we fixed in 2019.

“While we were acting on unsubscribe requests from individual Rewards members, we did not assume it meant other members sharing that email address had to be opted-out as well.

“The ACMA has made clear it expects all communications to an email address to stop in such scenarios.

“We accept this position and have unsubscribed all members who share an email address where at least one of those members has told us they want to unsubscribe.”

The $1,003,800 fine issued from the media watchdog is twice as hefty as the previous record slapped on Optus in January.