Does Spammy work at Real Rewards and Alliance Bank?

I received this phone spam recently (See Picture Below) from a financial institution whose name is blatantly emblazoned on the SMS. It was to invite me to some deal which I was not interested in.



Within the SMS was the give-away sign - the poorly masked culprit's name of how my phone number got into Alliance Bank's database since I had never banked with that bank nor interested to do so in the future for what they just did.

I am sure you have received some of these nasties some time. Some of you may have been spammed almost daily that you were forced to discontinue your number and seek new one.



This is not the first I received and my mistake was probably I had signed up - many years ago - with a loyalty scheme called Real Rewards. For those who don't know, Real Rewards is among the first loyalty schemes linking various merchants in Malaysia and has today become quite successful (I won't go into the details but click the link to the website if you wish to know more and I am not even charging them for this traffic diversion!).

Somehow, I think the chief executive officer has been poorly advised about unsolicited promotional messages such as what transpired between Alliance Bank and my phone. And I have strong reasons to feel that the top guns at Alliance Bank is similarly illiterate. Perhaps both are not even aware of the nasty lady called Spammy. And I am not even going to go into speculations on how my number ended in the Alliance Bank's database since the evidence clearly pointed to who the actual culprit for my discomfort is.

Any good public relations-aware organisation would have renewed their Opt-Ins annually to keep up with the times and from what I remembered, I had never given any permission for them to release my phone numbers to anyone and I had never ticked on the application form that I wanted to receive any promotional messages from them or their partners.

What I gave was my contact phone number to which they can call me to inform the status of my card or anything that relates to my usage of the card.

Technically, if I was in Australia, and they, too, are Australia based, I could have reported them for spamming, to which its corporate image would have been marred. Perhaps they would even have been slapped with a hefty fine under their Spam Bill 2003.

I am writing here to perhaps give their corporate communications director a hint of what goes on under his/her nose and what he/she could possibly do to enhance his/her employers' corporate image. And these two entities are not alone in Malaysia although I have yet to hear about Spam Act being enforced or any Spammer made an example of.

I have also received unsolocited calls inviting me to some resort marketing 'seminars' that I was not interested in nor cared two hoot about. To the Spam Blind marketing directors and managers in Malaysia, read about anti-spam laws in Australia I have linked to. They may not enforced be in Malaysia as I know it, still, it is bad public relations to be part of the spamming process.