Meal kit brand HelloFresh has been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after it sent a staggering 79 million emails and 1 million texts.
The ICO has ordered the Berlin-based firm to pay £140,000 as the result of a 2022 investigation calling the extensive seven-month spam marketing campaign a “clear breach of trust”.
HelloFresh has said it has now changed its email and text marketing policy.
The investigation was launched just under two years ago after 14 direct complaints were received by the regulator, as well as a scarcely believable 8,729 complaints made to the 7726 spam message reporting service.
It found that the text messages were sent based on an opt-in statement that did not make any reference to text marketing, while the email opt-in was included as part of an age confirmation statement which was likely to “unfairly incentivise” sign-up.
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ICO of investigations, Andy Curry said this was a “clear breach of trust”.
“Customers weren’t told exactly what they’d be opting into, nor was it clear how to opt out. From there, they were hit with a barrage of marketing texts they didn’t want or expect, and in some cases, even when they told HelloFresh to stop, the deluge continued.”
In a further indictment of the meal kit brand’s shady marketing practices, the ICO also found that Hello Fresh had neglected to explain that customer’s information would be used for marketing for up to 24 hours after cancelling their accounts.
It then continued to contact some customers after they had asked the brand take them off their marketing list.
Responding to these developments, HelloFresh was at pains to stress that its customers “[were] the centre of everything [they] do,” and that it took its obligations to protect customer data “very seriously”.
The brand said: “We have worked closely with the ICO. We have carefully considered their feedback and have made changes to our SMS and email policy.”
