I Told You So!

I’m not one for being smug and arrogant.  Seriously, I’m not, and I can prove it.  If I wanted to have lots of opportunities to show off, I wouldn’t be a Southampton season ticket holder.  I’d support a certain North London team, whose fans take very great delight in texting me after every match saying how well their team did and how badly mine did, as if I hadn’t noticed.

 

So perhaps it’s only fair that when I’m really really right about something, and lots of other people are wrong, I get a disproportionate sense of satisfaction!

 

Last year I ran a number of seminars and gave a number of talks about GDPR.  The talks were always well received and I had great feedback and praise.  However, one query kept coming up time and time again.  People coming to the talks kept telling me that they had seen/heard/read/been told that they MUST have consent before they could contact anyone on their database.

 

GDPR sets out six grounds on which you have the right to contact someone, only one of which is consent.  If you are satisfied that you can fit within any of the criteria, then you can contact that person.  Whilst people should always be certain that they definitely fit within their criteria, they should equally be certain that they are not cutting themselves off from people who want/need their services. 

 

Nevertheless, many people (presumably those that didn’t hear my talks!) contacted everyone on their database and asked for consent, only to find that many people didn’t give it, probably not because they didn’t want to still receive whatever information was on offer, but because they were inundated with requests and decided to ignore them all.  As a consequence, many companies lost huge chunks of their mailing lists which had taken years to build and will no doubt take many more years to replace.  For example, I heard about a lower league football team that was advised (wrongly) that they needed consent from all of their fans, and now their database has been reduced by 97%!!!!

 

So, I was very amused to read in the legal press this week that it’s been accepted that many advisers gave advice that was far too conservative, specifically misinterpreting the need for consent, which was completely wrong and unnecessary.  In other words, I was right!

 

However, it’s not too late.    GDPR is an ongoing obligation, and even if you don’t have a policy, or you have a policy that you think might not be as good as it could be, or even if you’ve lost a load of your database there are still things that can be done to correct it.   Let me know if I can do anything to help you.  We can meet for a chat and discuss the fixtures, GDPR and other exciting subjects.

 

Kleyman & Co Solicitors.  The full service law firm.  You’ll never walk alone.