Ofcom urge contact centres to reduce nuisance calls

Ofcom have teamed up with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to write an open letter to the contact centre community to stress the need for reducing nuisance calls.

It seems that both Ofcom and ICO are starting to flex their muscles over nuisance calls.

In the last few years, the ICO has issued 19 enforcement notices for breaches of PECR: eight for live calls, six for faxes, four for automated calls and one for both live and automated calls. Two of these companies were subsequently prosecuted for breaching the enforcement notices. One company was fined £600 and the other was fined £5,200.

Enforcement so far includes

• A monetary penalty of £90,000 for a company called DM Design after they continued to make unsolicited live marketing calls to individuals who had already registered with the TPS and confirmed that they did not wish to be contacted.
• This action follows two previous penalties which were issued in November to the joint owners of a company called Tetrus Telecoms who instigated the mass sending of unsolicited SMS text messages – which resulted in the two men receiving penalties totalling £440,000. Both individuals were also prosecuted by the ICO for failing to notify their processing of personal data, leading to a fine for each person of £2,000.
• Last year, Ofcom issued a £750,000 penalty to HomeServe and a £60,000 penalty to npower.
• An investigation into TalkTalk’s compliance with the abandoned and silent calls policy is continuing.

The letter also highlights that “Ofcom considers repeated forwarding of inauthentic or inaccurate CLI to be a form of persistent misuse.”