Sunday, January 11, 2009

No response yet, follow-up letter sent to Privacy Officers, President, CFO of Lexmark

Hello friends, it's the evening of Sunday, January 11th and my consumerist cries have not been heard: Lexmark has not sent me any response to my December 3 inquiry as of this evening! 

I don't expect to receive anything tomorrow, so it is with some regret and a slight pang of excitement that I am dropping my follow-up letter in the mail tomorrow, which differs from the last letter in a few key ways:
  • I've imposed a 30-day timeline for a response;
  • I've specified that the response be sent to my address;
  • I've outlined what happens if I don't get a response - the issue goes to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
  • I've CC'd the letter to the big-wigs: The President of Lexmark Canada and its Chief Financial Officer, supposedly responsible for legal information. 
Letter (click for big):


At this point I've got to shift gears with my strategy. The fact that I'm a Canadian and that there exists a Canadian headquarters for Lexmark means that they'll be the ones who have to deal with me, not the head office in the States. I'll continue to CC their privacy officer on general letters if I have to keep sending them, but I think I have to focus on communication with the Canadian office. 

While writing letters to presidents of massive corporations is fun in its own respect, I can't lose sight of what this is all about: privacy rights! No one has the right to have the ability to track every document I print and trace it back to me. It's poor business practice to sell products to consumers that violates their right to lead a private life, especially without their knowledge or consent!

Next up: Wait 30 days, see if there's a response. If there is a response, pursue it to the fullest degree. If not, write to the Privacy Commissioner and bring this blog to the attention of as much online media sources as possible. In the interim, traffic won't really do any good. I want to give them a chance to respond before attempting to bring them into the internet spotlight. 


3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the intresting read. After watching the movie The Lives of Others about the Stasi and them trying to track down people per the typewriter they used...in that light I could see it being used as a tool to track down smalltime counterfitters. Counterfitting has always been a concern with the emergance of new technology.

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