Brit firm fined £200k for banging on about missold PPI in 11.4 million nuisance calls

A Leeds-based claims management firm has been fined £200,000 for making more than 11 million unwanted PPI calls, the UK’s data watchdog announced today.

The investigation, prompted by complaints to the Information Comissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), found that Brazier Consulting Services Ltd (BCS) had made repeated nuisance calls to people about the misselling of payment protection insurance (PPI).

Following an investigation, the ICO said that 21,436,331 connected calls were made by BCS between 1 February 2019 and 31 July 2019.

Of these, the commissioner found that 11,489,873 were made for the purposes of marketing “claims management services” leading to 316 complaints to the ICO and TPS.

“It’s clear from the complaints we received that these calls caused real distress,” said Natasha Longson, ICO Investigations Manager.

“What’s more, the firm continued to bombard people by phoning even when they’d been asked to stop.”

One of those contacted by BCS said: “I was asked if I had made any PPI claims. I then asked for the caller to remove my number from the system. She then said that she was not allowed to remove numbers from the system, and that I would have to do it myself. I asked her if she was aware of the GDPR regulations and she said, ‘Of course, but are you on the GDPR?'”

Publishing its Monetary Penalty Notice [PDF], the ICO found that BCS was in breach of regulation 21A of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

As well as handing out the £200,000 fine, the ICO also issued an enforcement notice compelling the company to stop its illegal marketing activity. It also told them that failure to do is a criminal offence.

Last month, a home improvement firm based in East Sussex was collared by the ICO for making more than 900,000 unsolicited marketing calls to phone numbers registered with the TPS. Colour Coat of St Leonards-on-Sea was fined £130,000 after the ICO received 50 complaints about unwanted marketing calls. ®

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