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Reactiv Media fined £50,000 for breaching the TPS

 Article added: 30/07/2014

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has served digital marketing company Reactiv Media Limited with a £50,000 fine after an investigation discovered they had made unsolicited marketing calls to people who had registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).

Between the period November 2012 and December 2013 the TPS received 481 complaints from individuals who had received unsolicited calls from Reactiv Media Limited despite being registered with the TPS. The ICO also received 120 complaints.

Download the Monetary Penalty Notice

So that works out to be an average fine of £83 per call.

Let that be a warning to other companies breaching the TPS regulations.

ICO Director of Operations, Simon Entwisle said:

“The system is simple. People on the TPS register shouldn’t receive nuisance calls – full stop. Reactiv Media Limited ignored this rule and they must now pay a £50,000 penalty.”
“Nuisance calls and texts are a scourge for thousands of individuals and households across the UK. We will continue to target the companies responsible. To help us do this we are currently speaking with the government to get the legal bar lowered allowing us to enforce against more companies and send a stronger message.”

TPS Services Vince Costa-Barnett said:

“The average telemarketing or pro-active sales team will make many thousands of calls every week. To think that across just one year, according to Reactiv’s website, they make over 6,500,000 calls a year and these complaints equate to just 0.00009% of that. A seemingly tiny number in the overall scheme of things, yet £50,000 doesn’t seem so small!”
“This means more fines are coming for companies breaching the TPS regulations and failing to screen their data properly.”

A statement from the Reactiv Media board:

“Whilst Reactiv Media is disappointed to receive a fine from the ICO, the fine relates almost in its entirety to events that happened 18 months ago in October & November of 2012. At that point in time there was an error in our TPS screening process, which meant we did call some numbers that we weren’t meant to call, for this we apologise. Some of these callers did however take a product or service as a result of the call. When we became aware of the error it was immediately rectified.”
“At Reactiv we talk to approximately 125,000 people per week, and indeed last week the number of complaints we received from the TPS register was zero. Over the last few years as a result of taking a call from Reactiv millions of people have taken a product or service from us.”
“Reactiv Media Limited takes privacy seriously and stands by a firm commitment to investigate and resolve any enquiry about the use of personal data within the time-line established via the Data Protection Act (1998).”
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