Keurboom Communications fined £400,000 for making 100 million nuisance calls
Firm issued with highest-ever nuisance calls fine after over 1,000 people complained about the automated messages
A COMPANY which made almost 100million nuisance calls over an 18 month period has been slapped with a record fine of £400,000.
The penalty was issued after 1,000 people complained about the automated calls.
Keurboom Communications Ltd, which was based in Bedfordshire and run by director Gregory Rudd, was found to have broken the law because it made marketing calls to people without their consent.
Many of the calls made were on subjects including road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which issued the fine, said some people had received repeat calls, sometimes on the same day and during unsociable hours.
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The company also hid its identity, making it harder for people to complain, the ICO said.
Firms can only make automated marketing calls to people if they have their specific consent, which Keurboom did not have.
Steve Eckerlsey, head of enforcement at the ICO said: “Keurboom showed scant regard for the rules, causing upset and distress to people unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of one its 100million calls.
“The unprecedented scale of its campaign and Keurboom’s failure to co-operate with our investigation has resulted in the largest fine issued by the Information Commissioner for nuisance calls."
Keurboom Communications Ltd has since gone out of business and can no longer make any nuisance calls.
But that also means that the ICO may not be able to recover the fine.
Mike Lordan at the DMA, which works closely with the ICO to stamp out nuisance calls, said: “We applaud the work of the Information Commissioner's Office in their work against rogue marketers who do nothing for consumers and give the legitimate industry a bad name.
"We hope that in the future rogue marketers will face the real threat of prison when abusing consumers in this way, which will be an effective deterrent.”
The previous record nuisance call fine was in February 2016, when the ICO fined Prodial, a lead generation company, £350,000 for making 46million nuisance calls.
How you can block nuisance calls
1. Register your phone with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), which adds your number to a list that don’t want to receive sales and marketing calls
2. Buy a call-blocking product from your phone provider or install one yourself
3. To stop nuisance texts, forward it to 7726 – this spells "SPAM" on your phone keypad. This will report the sender to your mobile network company
4. Always make sure you report the calls to the Telephone Preference Service or the Information Commissioners’ Office so the company can hopefully be fined.
According to separate figures from the ICO last month, just 22 penalties were issued to firms who repeatedly targeted people with cold calling and texts in 2016.
And only four paid them – the rest dodged the fines by shutting down the firms and opening new ones.
From January to December 2016, the ICO recorded a whopping 134,828 calls – 70,000 of which were automated messages. And there are millions more every year which go unreported.
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