News - EMC Advisory Services Limited fined

EMC Advisory Services Limited fined £70,000 for breaching TPS

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a £70,000 fine to EMC Advisory Services Limited, a Devon based marketing firm, for making calls to people registered on the Telephone Preference Services (TPS).

The company was responsible for 630 complaints to the ICO and the TPS between 1^st March 2013 and 28^th February 2014. So to be clear, that’s only 52 complaints per month which probably equates to a tiny fraction of the calls made by the company, but resulted in a fine equating to £195 per complaint.

The ICO warned the company last year that under the electronic marketing regulations they were responsible for ensuring third parties making calls on their behalf were not contacting people who’d previously opted out of receiving marketing calls. Despite the warning, the ICO and the TPS continued to receive complaints from people receiving nuisance calls from either EMC Advisory Services Limited or the other companies acting on its behalf.

ICO’s Head of Enforcement, Stephen Eckersley, said:

“EMC Advisory Services Limited has received today’s penalty because they fundamentally failed to understand the law and didn’t act on our warning.” (not to call people registered on the TPS)

TPS Services Vince Costa-Barnett said:

“Companies really have to sit up and listen. In the past, TPS Screening may have been seen by some to be ‘optional’, but make no mistakes about it, the ICO are gunning for companies failing to TPS screen their data and it’s not taking that many complaints to get yourself landed with a huge fine. If that’s not bad enough, the ICO are making headway in changing the law so as to be able to issue many more fines.”

“Get your processes and systems organised now and don’t leave it until you have the ICO knocking your door down.”