Point One Marketing Ltd Fined £50,000 for TPS Breaches
Article added: 18/08/2015
Point One Marketing Ltd (formerly Conservo Digital Ltd) has been fined £50,000 for 731 TPS breaches over a 14 month period (1st Feb 2014 - 31st March 2015) so that's £68.40 per breach or £3,571 per month.
The ICO received a number of complaints from TPS registered consumers saying:
- they had asked not to be called again, but that Point One Marketing had called them again anyway
- high pressure sales tactics
- sales staff were rude
- sales staff wouldn't tell consumers where they got their details from
- in some cases sales staff called the same number multiple times the same day
Point One Marketing Ltd claim to have had screening processes in place, but that those processes didn't work or that the data they used overrode any TPS Registrations.
If you have opted in data from a supplier and the user subsequently registers on the TPS, then the TPS registration overrides the opt in. Conversely, the opposite is true if they opted in after they registered on the TPS.
The ICO was concerned that Point One Marketing Ltd had not undertaken any due diligence checks on the data they were purchasing to ensure it was opted in to receive such calls.
The ICO was further concerned that the company was failing to operate a proper Do Not Call (DNC) list to suppress numbers of consumers requesting not to be called again.
The ICO Said:
"...given that the Company relied heavily on direct marketing due to the nature of its business, and the fact that the issue of unsolicited calls was widely publicised by the media as being a problem. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that they should have been aware of their responsibilities in this area."
Point One Marketing Ltd admitted to having problems with their data supplier, yet they persisted in using them until the ICO intervened.
The ICO Commissioner consider whether or not Point One Marketing Ltd failed to take reasonable steps to prevent breaches and in doing so said:
"Reasonable steps in these circumstances would have included carrying out due diligence checks, screening the data against the TPS register and its own internal suppression list (DNC)..."
The Commissioner was therefore satisfied that Point One Marketing Ltd had not taken reasonable steps.
Point One Marketing Ltd were fined £50,000.
Point One Marketing Ltd Monetary Penalty Notice as issued by the ICO