Brendan Reilly has made a formal complaint to the Department of Internal Affairs over a series of potentially illegal spam marketing emails from global furniture store, Ikea.
Who launched their first New Zealand store in December last year - quickly gaining popularity with over 18,000 visitors on the opening day.
Reilly is also calling for clearer unsubscribe features and customer support lines for Ikea.
Brendan Reilly entered an Ikea giveaway competition late last year, providing his name and email address. Under the terms and conditions of recieving marketing emails and becoming an Ikea family member.
Since April he has been bombarded with marketing emails which didn’t bother him until May 10 when he decided to click the unsubscribe button.
“Considering there is no Ikea near me they became increasingly irrelevant” Reilly, a radio broadcasting tutor said.
Following this he received an email on May 12, 14 and 15.
Under the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 any unsubscribe request must be actioned within five days.
However, this did not happen.
He continued to recieve marketing emails roughly one every three days and then on May 25 he emailed Ikea and asked if he could be taken off their marketing list - to which he received no reply.
This process was increasingly disrupting his daily life so he decided to click the unsubscribe button for a second time.
After this he received nine more emails leading up to June 16.
“I was being constantly spammed by Ikea and quite frankly I had enough of it!”
The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 describes spam as unsolicited commercial electronic messages which is illegal in New Zealand.
