Regulator issues record £350,000 fine over PPI mis-selling calls

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/feb/29/regulator-issues-record-fine-over-illegal-ppi-calls

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A company that illegally sold on personal information and plagued members of the public with more than 46m automated nuisance calls relating to Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis-selling claims has received a record £350,000 fine.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the government’s data protection regulator, handed out the largest fine in its history to Prodial, singling it out as the worst case of illegal cold calling it had ever seen.

Records indicated the marketing campaign could have produced a turnover of nearly £1m. Despite the sums of money involved the company, which traded from a residential property in Brighton, has been placed into voluntary liquidation by one of its directors. The ICO’s enforcement team is working with insolvency experts to recover the fine.

The information commissioner Christopher Graham said it was “one of the worst cases of cold calling we have ever come across. The volume of calls made in just a few months was staggering.”

More than 1,000 people complained to the ICO about the automated calls that played recorded messages relating toPPI claims.

Complainants said they were called repeatedly and that often there was no opt-out facility. One person said they felt helpless that they could do nothing to stop the calls, which were very intrusive at all times of day or night. A doctor complained the constant spam calls were interfering with his work as all calls had to be answered in case of emergency.

Companies can use internet phone lines to make enormous numbers of recorded marketing calls cheaply. The law states that companies can only make calls to people who have specifically consented to being contacted in this way. But the ICO investigation found Prodial had no such consent.

Evidence from the ICO’s investigation showed the information from these calls was used to sell people’s personal details on to claims management companies.

Graham said: “This was a company that knew it was breaking the law. A company director admitted that once the ICO became involved, the company shut down.

“That stopped the calls, but we want to send a clear message to other firms that this type of lawbreaking will not pay. That is why we have handed out our highest ever fine. No matter what companies do to try to avoid the law, we will find a way to act.”

The ICO, which has the power to impose a penalty of up to £500,000, imposed more than £1.1m worth of penalties for nuisance calls and text messages in 2015 – up from £330,000 in 2014 – with the same total in the pipeline for 2016.

It has also ordered three Manchester-based companies to stop making unsolicited nuisance calls. Enforcement notices have been issued to a network of companies in the town of Sale, which are responsible for millions of automated nuisance calls that covered mis-sold pensions, PPI and debt management.