A home improvement company has been fined £130,000 by the UK’s data privacy watchdog for inundating consumers with nearly a million nuisance calls.
ColourCoat Ltd of St Leonards on Sea in East Sussex provides insulation and wall and roof coatings, as well as roof repairs and cleaning, according to its website.
However, the firm is said to have made over 900,000 nuisance marketing calls to recipients in just over eight months.
After scores of complaints to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the regulator launched an investigation, finding that many of the recipients had signed up to the UK’s “Do Not Call” register, known as the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
According to the ICO, the firm repeatedly called people who had asked not to be called again and withheld its phone numbers to prevent being contacted. It also used false company names on these calls, such as “Homes Advice Bureau,” and “EcoSolve UK,” the regulator claimed.
Along with the fine, the firm was hit with an enforcement notice demanding it stops all illegal activity or faces court action.
ICO investigations manager, Natasha Longson, said ColourCoat had no regard for the law or the individuals it inundated with nuisance calls.
“Businesses employing these tactics are very likely to come to our attention. The catalog of contraventions we uncovered, as well as the manner in which calls were made in this case, resulted in a fine and a legal notice to stop,” she added.
“Some of the complainants described the calls received as ‘rude,’ ‘aggressive’ and ‘abusive,’ and made one complainant feel ‘threatened.’ People also reported that the calls made them feel ‘annoyed’ or ‘anxious’.”
The firm was fined not under the GDPR but the UK’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which governs privacy rights regarding marketing calls, emails and texts.
Unlike the better-known data protection law, the PECR only grants the ICO fining powers of up to £500,000.