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Some online retailers and service providers have this habit of emailing their would-be (or existing) customers who added something to their shopping cart, entered their email address, but then changed their mind and navigated away.

A typical email like that will have the subject line like "You forgot something in your cart. Complete your order now!".

The email body typically includes the cart contents, invitation to check out and list of accepted payment methods.

Does the fact that the email recipient added something to cart and filled their email in the form (but did not check out) create sufficient ground to not consider such emails unsolicited communication?

For the case of an existing customer, let's assume the T&C say nothing about such emails.

Greendrake
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1 Answers1

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Does the fact that the email recipient added something to cart and filled their email in the form (but did not check out) create sufficient ground to not consider such emails unsolicited communication?

(and local European laws before that):

From a european perspective: hell no!

That might be the reason why I have never seen such a mail in my life.

  • Sending my email to their servers without my consent? Illegal.
  • Saving my email on their servers without my consent? Illegal.
  • Using the illegally sent and saved email for marketing? Are you kidding?

This was illegal way before the GDPR, but it sure still is now.

What can and will happen is that you create an account, by submitting a form and agreeing to their terms of use. Then the business is allowed to contact you, because you agreed to it. If you did not explicitely agree to receive third party content, it would not be legal to send you random advertisements of third parties, but "you forgot something in your cart, maybe you want to buy it" is their core business and they can communicate to you about that.

So to summarize: the general idea to remind you about your shopping cart is perfectly legal, assuming you already have an established business relationship and you agreed to it in their terms of use when you created your account. Just stealing your email adress without your consent and writing unsolicited emails? No. Not legal at all.

nvoigt
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