Mark Nestmann has an interesting blog post up about American Express.  Here’s an excerpt of their new terms of service, effective 2 April 2009:

You authorize us to call or send a text message to you at any number you give us or from which you call us, including mobile phones. You authorize us to make such calls using automatic telephone dialing systems for any lawful purpose, including but not limited to: suspected fraud or identity theft; Account transactions or servicing; offers of American Express products and services; and collecting on your Account.  You authorize us to place prerecorded calls in connection with the status of your account, or security and identity theft matters.  You agree to pay any fees or charges you incur for incoming calls or text messages from us without reimbursement.

Now granted, this isn’t about email.  It’s a credit card company saying that it’s okay for them to contact you with their offers and such by telephone and even by using pre-recorded messages (something that would otherwise be illegal).

But, if you have an American Express card did you know about this change?  Did you read your terms of service closely enough to have noticed that you were giving them this permission by using your card?  I suspect not.  In fact, I suspect that most people won’t notice until it’s too late and the solicitations start coming in.

There are lots and lots of websites out there that think that they can get permission the same way for building email lists.  For instance, here is an excerpt of one website’s “privacy statement“:

We collect the e-mail addresses of those who communicate with us via e-mail, information on what pages and sites consumers access or visit, user-specific information on what pages and sites consumers access or visit and information volunteered by the consumer, such as survey information and/or site registrations.

The information we collect is used to improve the content of our Web page, used to notify consumers about updates to our Web site and is used to contact consumers for marketing purposes.

So, if you communicate with them by email they have reserved the right to contact you with their solicitations.  But, chances are you have never noticed that because chances are that you have never read the (lack of) “privacy statement” they published.  People rarely read privacy policies.

I suspect that American Express is going to suffer some degree of publicity hit as a result of their new Terms of Service.  If you try to pull the same stunt, you should also expect to suffer a reputation hit.  The difference here being that American Express’s telephone calls won’t be blocked, but your email will be.