City firm is fined £240k for making unwanted phone calls

ACOMPANY has been fined £240,000 for making unwanted marketing phone calls. According to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Cardiff-based Outsource Strategies Ltd (OSL) made more than a million calls between February 2021 and March 2022 to numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), also known as the “do not call” register.

OSL has been fined a total of £240,000, while a London-based company was fined £100,000 after both businesses were found to have made a total of almost 1.43 million calls to people across the UK.

The calls resulted in 76 complaints to the ICO and TPS, with people claiming that callers were “aggressive” and used high-pressure sales tactics to persuade them to sign up for products.

The ICO said its investigation also found evidence that both companies were specifically targeting elderly and vulnerable people.

The independent body said it received details of unwanted calls where people claimed that they “requested numerous times to be taken off the list” but to no avail and described it as “harassment”.

Others claimed that callers tried to persuade them to “join the Irish lottery” and assumed they “wanted [their] bank details, which left them feeling “annoyed” and “anxious”.

According to the ICO, OSL made 1,346,503 unwanted marketing calls between February 11, 2021, and March 22, 2022, to numbers registered with the TPS.

During its investigation, ICO said the company blamed TPS screening responsibility on its contracted partners and stated it also had internal systems in place to ensure this did not happen.

However, the ICO said it found this to be incorrect, as 141,914 calls were still made to people marked as “do not call” on its own systems.

The comissioner’s officer also said the investigation found that OSL directors were involved with a separate company previously fined by the ICO.

OSL has also been issued with an enforcement notice.

ICO said that OSL has appealed against the monetary penalty notice and the enforcement notice.

The Western Mail has approached OSL for a comment.

The ICO’s head of investigations, Andy Curry, has called the repeated calls “unacceptable”.

He said: “All the people targeted by these nuisance calls should not have been called in the first place.

“They had all taken action to protect themselves by registering with the UK’s ‘do not call’ register.

“It is unacceptable they were repeatedly interrupted and subjected to aggressive and unpleasant marketing, particularly as some of the victims told us they were people with vulnerabilities.

“I would like to thank those who took the time to report to us, as this helped our investigation to bring these two companies to account.

“All companies engaging in direct marketing should take note.

“If you flout the law, you can expect the ICO to use the full force of its regulatory powers against you.

“And, as in this case, it doesn’t matter how complicated the network of companies and individuals are, we will work through the evidence to find and take action against the perpetrators of these unlawful calls to protect the public.”