It has been reported that the Advertising Standards Authority has banned a UK loans company from sending out a marketing message to people via their mobile phones.
Many people in the UK get fed up of receiving marketing materials through the post from loan companies encouraging them to take out finance, and phone calls from companies trying to sell them loans and other forms of finance. However, two people have recently complained after receiving SMS messages via their mobile phones from a loan company in the UK.
The two complainants said that they had received a message from Yes Loans reading: “Hi XXX we have received your loan enquiry please call Yes Loans UK.com on XXX or reply yes for a callback txtSTOP2optout” They complained about the messages to the Advertising Standards Authority, stating that they had not applied for loans and found the informal nature of the message to be misleading as it was not clear that the text was actually a form of marketing for the loan company.
Officials from Yes Loans said that these text messages were normally sent out to people that had applied for loans either directly or through an affiliated company. However, the firm admitted that in the case of the first recipient the message had been sent out in error and with the second recipient it had been over two years since any loan enquiry had been made.
The Advertising Standards Authority said that the loans company needed to check that its databases were up to date and to make sure that any marketing materials were clearly worded in a way that would make it obvious that they were marketing materials. The loans firm has been told not to send the message again in its current form.
Source - Mortgage Strategy