How can the "No advertising" sign be enforced?
How can the "No advertising" sign be enforced?
My letterbox is inundated every day with a multitude of advertising leaflets, despite the fact that I've put a "no advertising" label on it. Is there any way of stopping this practice?
Véronique, Geneva
Under the Swiss Post Act, the Yellow Giant distributes addressed postal items in the final form in which they are to be delivered, such as letters, parcels, newspapers and periodicals. This means that the Post Office is obliged to place advertising addressed to you by name in your letterbox.
As a result, the "no advertising" sticker can only protect you against "all household" advertising. However, the guidelines issued by the Swiss Commission for Fair Trading specify that the above-mentioned label has no effect on requests for donations from recognised organisations, free newspapers or election propaganda.
This commission is set up by the Swiss Advertising Foundation for Fairness in Commercial Communication; it is therefore a self-regulatory body in the field of advertising. It can be contacted by anyone and is empowered to issue rulings on the basis of the law on unfair competition and the International Chamber of Commerce's Consolidated Code on Advertising and Commercial Communication Practices. Penalties such as publication of the full identity of the offender or recommendations for exclusion from professional associations may be imposed in the event of non-compliance with its decisions.
To protect yourself from addressed advertising, you should contact the sender directly. In particular, you can return the letter with the words "refused, please delete me from your file". If this does not suffice, you can contact the above-mentioned Commission, which has already handed down several decisions prohibiting the sender from continuing to send advertising and has even published the names of sanctioned companies on its website www.faire-werbung.ch.
If this does not work, you should be aware that you may be able to take legal action under Article 2 of the law on unfair competition, which defines as unfair and therefore unlawful any commercial behaviour or practice which is misleading or otherwise contravenes the rules of good faith and which affects relations between competitors or between suppliers and customers.
