Apologies in advance because this post is way off topic for this blog but I wanted to document this little story in the hope that it will benefit others.
We’ve been battling with one organisation for a while now (i.e. at least a couple of years) to get them to stop their direct marketing phone calls. Each time they called it was the same conversation to get them to suppress all cals to that number. Each time the caller did absolutely nothing about it. Until today that is.
This morning I had yet another call from the same organisation. We had the same discussion about stopping the calls, that the line was registered with the TPS and that we really didn’t want them to call any more and I rather suspect the caller did the usual action, i.e. nothing, just preferring to pick up the next auto-dialed number from the queue.
After the call I dug out Monday’s email from those fantastic people over at Business Link about the changes to the Privacy and Electronic Communications legislation aka “Direct Marketing” or more coarsely as “Junk Phone Calls” and “Spam.” The legislation hasn’t actually changed, just the amounts that corporations can be fined. The salient text from the email I received is copied here…
Stiffer penalties for unwanted marketing messages
The introduction of the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive also sees new powers for the ICO. The ICO will be able to serve monetary penalties of up to £500,000 for the most serious incidents that break the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. This covers businesses and other organisations sending unwanted marketing emails and texts, as well as making live and automated marketing phone calls.
This did however prompt me to look up the legislation itself which can be found here:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2003/2426/contents/made
In my case, regulation 21(1)(a) seemed most relevant and I’ve copied the text fragment below.
Unsolicited calls for direct marketing purposes
21.—(1) A person shall neither use, nor instigate the use of, a public electronic communications service for the purposes of making unsolicited calls for direct marketing purposes where
(a) the called line is that of a subscriber who has previously notified the caller that such calls should not for the time being be made on that line; or
(b) the number allocated to a subscriber in respect of the called line is one listed in the register kept under regulation 26.
We’d been receiving these calls for at least two years and on every occasion had informed the caller that we no longer wished to receive them. Ultimately I resolved to fix the problem once and for all.
Working on the assumption that I was dealing with a large organisation and not being a customer, their support team would probably have no idea how to deal with this complaint. Time to go to the top. The CEO. This was likely to be the single poerson in the entire organisation that would actually make ure something was done about it. With the help of Mr. Google I quickly found this page with the names and email addresses of all the CEOs one would ever hope not to need to contact.
For good measure I also looked up the Chairman of the Board too – after all to keep the CEO honest I needed her to know that I’d also bothered her boss too. I can’t for one moment imagine that either of them would like the position of being front line customer support and by emailing both, the CEO can’t simply ignore the email as she would be asked about it. I also wanted to leave a paper trail behind such that should the organisation ever be audited in regard to contravening the legislation, this email would be found and awkward questions would be sure to follow.
The actual email I sent was very short, polite and to the point. Three short paragraphs, included the link to the legislation above and very clearly stated that I wanted all tele-sales and tele-marketing calls to stop. I also said that I wasn’t a customer, had no intention of ever becoming a customer and all she was doing was damaging the reputation of the company and weakening the brand.
Thirty-three minutes later I had a reply with an apology!
I also had a telephone call from her office saying that we would receive no further calls from them. I’ll have to wait to see what happens but I’m optimistic that I’ve finally managed to get through to them. If not I will start the formal complaints procedure through the ICO.
They’re now apparently going to start an internal investigation into my complaint which will cost them significantly more money than they could ever have hoped to have made from me in 10 years.
All this because someone either lacked the ability or the capacity to click a little check box on their PC screen that said “don’t contact this person in future”
The really laughable thing about this whole affair is that we have a cable phone so can’t even use the service they were trying to push on us. I used to tell them this but gave up after the first year.
What Can You Do?
In all honesty you’re not going to stop them overnight but there are a few simple things that you can do.
It’s important to remember that the person calling isn’t actually the problem: it’s the corporation that’s the issue, not the person on the end of the phone. After all, they’re just doing their job. Having a go, picking a fight or winding them up isn’t going to do any good whatsoever. They’ll just move on to the next call in the queue. If they quit, there are enough people out there to take their place and it’ll just be someone else calling next time. There are also probably more than a few callers out there that enjoy getting someone riled and you’ll just be the subject of an “I had this one earlier…” discussion at the coffee machine. It isn’t worth giving them the satisfaction. [Note to self to take one’s own advice :-)]
What I’d suggest is…
- Make sure you get the name of the company and if possible the name of the caller
- Tell them very firmly that you no longer wish to receive calls from them and that they are to suppress all calls to that number
- If they have called previously, mention that you have made a similar request before.
- If you are registered with the TPS tell them that also.For points 2 to 4, it is worth remembering that a lot of organisations record these calls, mainly for training purposes, but you can take advantage of this by lodging your objection on the tape. If you then escalate a complaint and they listen to the recording they will hear your voice stating your objections.
- You could try the customer service numbers but for persistent offenders you may just get bogged down in bureaucracy or find someone in an off-shore call centre that has no idea how to deal with this issue.
- For persistent callers keep a log of when you received the calls, who you spoke to and a brief summary of the conversation, including any requests you made for them to stop calling you.
- If the problem persists, email the CEO, copy the Chairman of the Board and state your objection. Include details of the dates and times of the calls, who you spoke to etc. You need to let them have enough information to realise that you have made several requests for it to stop and that they have been ignored. You also need to help them, or rather the person investigating the complaint, to locate the logs/recording of the call.For instance, if you lodge a complaint and they listen to the recording of the call, hear your request to not receive any calls in future and check the database only to find that the caller hasn’t ticked the “don’t call again” box, they’ve not complied with the legislation and would be very vulnerable to some form of penalty. Consequently, that little field in the database will likely be corrected extremely quickly.
- If all else fails, make a formal complaint through the ICO. You’ll need to provide documentary evidence to support your complaint, hence the need to keep records in point 6 above. You should also include copies of any emails you have exchanged and dates, times and a summary of any telephone conversations you’ve have had and who you spoke to.
