Company fined for making 75 MILLION nuisance calls!

75 MILLION nuisance calls!

You can probably guess what the nature of the calls were as well, right? It’s not hard to guess when pretty much everyone in the UK has been hit with these automated calls by companies who are desperate to find people to make PPI claims.

The company at the centre of this massive breach, the aptly named Miss-sold Products UK Ltd, reportedly made the automated marketing calls between November 2015 and March 2016, and they were the standard and annoying automated voice calls trying to push people to make PPI claims.

Breach of the law

The calls were unsolicited – i.e. the perpetrators behind these annoying and sometimes distressing calls had no consent from the recipients of the calls to receive their pushy marketing messages.

This is against the law.

They were also, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reports, in breach of the law by not identifying the name of their organisation in the call.

The calls resulted in a number of complaints being made, with some noting they were unable to opt-out of the calls; some receiving multiple calls; and some calls received late at night.

Company “blatantly ignored the laws”

The ICO are confident that the director of the company knew exactly what he/she were doing. Reportedly, the director tried to get the company struck-off from Companies House Register, but the ICO blocked the move as part of their enforcement action against them.

An ICO Enforcement Group Manager said:

“This company blatantly ignored the laws on telephone marketing, making a huge volume of intrusive calls over a short period of time and without any apparent attempt to ensure they had the consent of the people they were harassing.”

“The ICO will come down hard on rogue operators who want to treat the law and the UK public with contempt. We hope the Government will bring forward plans to introduce personal liability for directors as a matter of urgency, to stop them from escaping punishment after profiting from nuisance calls and texts.”

“In the absence of a change in the law, the ICO will continue to face challenges in the recovery of penalties, and rogue directors will think they can get away with causing nuisance to members of the public.”

It’s clear that a change in the law is needed to stop these companies setting up shop and breaking the law without any consideration for the people they harass. This won’t be the last time we will see a case of this nature until more is done with the legislation we have.