Why you should obtain consent for electronic transmission of notices NOW.
In the current environment, all your services providers are going to battle to get ongoing notices delivered to your Customers. Some of these may just be ‘FYI’- type notices, while others may be more serious. The fact remains that on-going communication with your customers is going to be vital.
However… the delivery of ‘post’ has been deemed a non-essential service, and traditional foot-soldiers are no longer able to walk the streets to deliver notices directly to Consumers…
At the same time, it is a cornerstone of our legal system that a person is entitled to receive notices relating to their accounts and contracts. As our lock-down presses ahead, more and more of these notices are going to be Legal in nature, be it for contractual changes, confirmation and acceptance of payment holidays, agreement cancellations, and so on.
The purpose of the well-known ‘Rule 4’ (Uniform Rules of Court) sets out certain minimum standards in order to make the assumption that the service (for a process of the Court) was sufficient to reach the Consumer’s attention. In such cases, notices have to be served in person, or by delivering a copy to their chosen domicillium.
The only way either of these options is possible in the foreseeable future is if the Consumer has selected an electronic address (email and/or mobile number) as their chosen domicillium.
There is, therefore, an argument that the delivery of any other important documentation (let’s go back to the examples of contractual changes, confirmation and acceptance of payment holidays, and agreement cancellations) also need to be communicated to your Customers via their chosen channels, in order for the agreements to be considered valid.
NOW is the time for your call centres to be updating these preferences with your Customers.
The legality of using a voice recording to amend/update an existing contract is shown in the above image.