The topic of the HomeServe fine for silent calls will be covered on Radio 5 Live at 18:20 this evening. A representative of the Fair Telecoms Campaign will commenting.

See also the story from the Telegraph:

Homeserve fined £750,000 for silent calls

The DMA have produced a 'toolkit' to help marketers respond to criticisms...
http://www.dma.org.uk/toolkit/panorama-cold-calling-undercover-pr-toolkit

This is the sort of nonsensical reply when you complain to The Information Commissioner’s Office........

Dear **************

Thank you for your correspondence about unsolicited automated direct marketing phone regarding PPI claims.

What we do
The Information Commissioner’s Office regulates the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR).  The PECR are concerned with the way organisations send marketing material by fax, text, email and telephone.  Marketing can include the promotion of goods, services, aims or ideals.

Automated direct marketing calls
Regulation 19 of the PECR says that automated direct marketing calls cannot be made without prior consent.   Automated calls usually take the form of a pre-recorded message.

Regulation 24 says that the caller must identify themselves when making automated marketing calls and must provide a valid business address or freephone number.

In most cases our approach to complaints is to educate organisations to help them understand what the PECR require.  We will also advise them to take any steps necessary to comply with the PECR in future.

Next steps
Where we receive a valid complaint about an identifiable organisation, we will raise a written complaint with the organisation in question, reminding them of their obligations under the PECR and asking them to suppress the complainant’s contact details. Please note that we are not able to physically prevent or ‘block’ any organisation from calling a particular number as it is not within the Commissioner’s powers to do so. 

Using the systems/databases available to us, we have unfortunately on this occasion been unable to identify the organisation that has called you.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is aware of a number of organisations making these types of calls.  Regrettably they can provide difficult to identify and take action against.

We will, however, keep a record of your complaint as these records may assist us in identifying organisations breaching the PECR in the future.

If we collate information from a number of different complaints we are much more likely to be able to identify those responsible with a view to taking further action against them.  Going forward, you can report any further automated calls which you receive via our website at: Receiving unwanted marketing texts or calls? Please use this link to report any further automated calls which you receive. 

Any action which we take as a result of these reports will be available on our website, www.ico.gov.uk. 

I am sorry we were unable to be of assistance on this occasion.

Yours sincerely

CJT-80, thanks for the tip, two more signatures just added (subject to receiving the confirming email)

sherbert wrote on Jul 3^rd, 2012 at 11:05am:
As with almost any telephony or numbering abuse in the UK, enforcement action appears to be at a minimum, whether the abuse relates to 0844 numbers within the NHS, PRS and MT SMS text scams, or unsolicited calls. The onus is always on the customer to clear many hurdles to achieve what should be a simple resolution. The feckless regulator maneuvers such that it can absolve itself from getting involved in any activity that may assist the consumer.

A possible solution, that would soon stop much of the cold-calling activity would be to impose a fine, say 100 pounds, for each verifiable call made by a telemarketer to someone who has requested not to receive such calls. The money would be split between the victim and the body overseeing such a scheme. There's little point in threatening half a million pound fines where, realistically, they will never be collected. One hundred quid a pop will hit them where it hurts.

Additionally, telemarketers must be mandated to provide valid caller ID information. Here, federal law requires all telemarketers to transmit CID data. CID spoofing is also in violation of federal law, and whilst these measures do not eliminate junk and silent calls, they certainly help.

This issue is now being heavily pushed in Scotland.

See this article in the Sunday Post and the campaign being run in conjunction with Mike Crockart MP.



I believe that the photo used by the Sunday Post is not of Debbie Harry.


Blondie could however provide a most suitable theme song for some aspects of our campaigns.

speedy wrote on Jul 7^th, 2012 at 12:15am:


International can come up even if people who are UK based use a cheap Voip or other similar service to connect to the call to UK.  PPI chasing call centres are normally UK based in my experience.

The position on International CLI's seems to have been changing lately as BT never provided them on my rural exchange but I nearly always got International CLI of the caller on my mobile.  But I now generally also get the CLI on my BT line.

Perhaps someone has finally got the OFT or Ofcom to do something about BT Openreach having the nerve to charge for a CLI service that is actually worse than the free equivalent service offered to all mobile phone users.