I've had a mobile phone for just over ten years now. I bought it before I moved to the UK; I reckoned it would be handy to have a mobile while trying to find a job and somewhere to live. The phone is a Sagum MC 3000. A wonderful piece of technology, although I rarely use it. Every time the sim card expires (which seems to happen after the phone hasn't been used for a year or so) I buy a new card and £10 credit. You can deduce from that that I'm not yet ready for an iBad or other 'smart' phones.

The reason for mentioning all this is that only recently I got introduced to spam texts. It happened after buying a Vodafone sim card. My word… they do get a kick out of spamming people who buy their products. It started with weekly messages about topping up before the start of the weekend but I now get spam almost daily about all sorts of 'special offers'. It seems Vodafone thinks it necessary to also send spam on behalf of third parties.

Anyway, today I decided to reply STOP SMS to 9774, as instructed in the latest spam message. I immediately got a message back to say that my marketing preferences will be changed within 28 days.

My marketing preferences?

28 days to stop sending me spam?

I should probably ask them why they made assumptions about my 'marketing preferences' in the first place (they never asked whether or not I want Vodafone spam) and why it takes them 28 days just to stop sending me unsolicited messages (perhaps it's indicative of how technologically advanced Vodafone's is?). I won't bother though; they would just claim that I opted in and that the law allows them up to 28 days to comply with my opt-out request. They're hard-core marketing people who really believe they're doing a people a favour by sending them spam.

So, I'll switch off my phone for 28 days, hope for the best, and never deal with Vodafone again.