In 2005 Jeffrey Weinstein, from Logan Square in the US, received an SMS from Timberland offering a 20% discount for shopping at their website. Weinstein wasn’t happy at receiving what he considered to be an unsolicited text message so he has sued Timberland and GSI Commerce an e-commerce company that worked with Timberland on the marketing campaign for 7 million dollars.
Weinstein, upon receving the message thought: “There has to be a law against something like this”. When he investigate the issue it emerged that the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans unsolicited calls on mobile telephones so he went ahead with a class action lawsuit against Timberland. Timberland has now agreed to start a $7 million settlement fund to compensate those affected by the unsolicited text messages although Weinstein will only be entitled to $5000 of this money.
Visiting the official website of the settlement fund allows claimants to complete a claim form detailing the exact dates they received the messages. Compensation is being capped at $150 per person but only if they can remember the date of the text message.
The fund is effectively meaningless because very few people will be able to remember when they received a spam text message dating back to 2003.
