This is Leong Sze Hian’s letter published in TODAY, July 26, 2007.
A country club in Singapore has sent a letter by ordinary mail to all its members informing them that $25 will be charged to their accounts as a donation to a charity in conjunction with a charity golf tournament.
Unless members choose to opt out by completing an attached form, the letter says that they do not need to do anything.
What if a member do not bother to open the club’s mail, or did not read it as it was bundled with the usual assortment of flyers – which is what normally happens with the piles of junk mail which we receive almost daily?
It is bad enough for telephone operators to require subscribers to opt out of new services that are chargeable, which raised an outcry by consumers in the media, or having to opt out of credit lines when applying for a credit card.
But opting out of a charity donation must be stretching the principle of “opt-out” to the limit.
Shouldn’t there be some regulations or guidelines to ensure that we are not bombarded with more and more “opt-outs”?
Will the legal experts or the authorities please advise as to how we can put a stop to this “opt-out” mania once and for all?
Can I opt out of any more “opt-outs”?
For more of Sze Hian’s writings, please visit his website here.
