“The BBC drew attention to all the calls being made about PPI claims and featured one such person who, having been called one time too many, decided to fight back and take the calling company to the small claims court where he successfully won his case, and over £200 in compensation and costs.”
Dawson added, “It’s not just the individual court costs that rogue calling companies face it’s also the huge fines that can be levied by Ofcom on companies that do not comply with the rules – up to a maximum of £500,000!
In this instance the person called was a member of the TPS (Telephone Preference Service) which overrides any ‘opt in’ box that may or may not have been ticked as part of a third party marketing campaign.”
The solution for how to avoid the risk of financial penalty is simple according to Wavenet.
“Use of a product, such as our own CallGard, a cloud based service that prevents call centres and companies making unauthorised phone calls to members of the TPS will reduce the risk down to almost zero.”
Dawson concludes, “This matter was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions recently and in the last six months three such firms have been fined £35,000 or more by the Information Commissioner's Office. CallGard is an automatic call screening solution which screens outbound calls against your internal ‘Do Not Call’ records and the most recent TPS and CTPS files as the call is made. Should an attempt be made to contact an individual who is on any of the records a message will advise the caller that the number dialed does not wish to receive marketing calls, and the call is barred.”