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This post is a follow up to the first, second and third rules of the Virgin Media forum moderators.

The title of this post are the words spoken to me today towards the end of a twenty three minute call I received from a chap called Pete, from Virgin Media‘s complaints department: You can blog about it all you like, we’ll allow you to do that.

The call was the result of a convergence of my complaints, sent in multiple directions, concerning the two main issues I’ve been having with the company recently: The first being the new P2P/NNTP traffic management policy (about which I have yet to post), which I believe is both unfair and unreasonable due to the way in which it has been implemented, and the second being the situation I’ve found myself in on their forums, being banned not once, not twice but three times.

The outcome of that call is that the complaints I’ve sent to the company via a number of channels have pretty much amounted to nothing.

When do spam and credit checks go hand in hand? Easy: When the spam is from an otherwise legitimate mail order company, and their unsubscribe link takes you through an account sign up process before you can actually unsubscribe – an account sign up process which includes a credit check because, after all, by signing up you are applying for a credit account with them.

The company concerned is Very, a catalogue company which is a Shop Direct Ltd brand along with Littlewoods and a few others. Recently, I started receiving marketing emails from Very which, as far as I am concerned, are unsolicited, making them unequivocally spam. Being a fairly well known, legitimate company, though, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and tried unsubscribing by following the link in their emails. However, I discovered that in order to do so it is necessary to apply for an account with them, for which a credit check is required.

A more detailed outline of events, including a brief history that shows how they got my email address, follows.

You can blog about it all you like – we’ll allow you to do that

When spam and credit checks go hand in hand