‘Stop the Calls’ Company fined for making nuisance calls

A business claiming to help prevent unsolicited calls has been fined £50,000 after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found it was making hundreds of such calls itself.

Point One Marketing Ltd, trading as ‘Stop the Calls’ a Bournemouth based company offered a service to consumers to stop cold calling – but was found to be calling people registered on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), who had specified they did not want to receive unsolicited or marketing calls. At times they called repeatedly on the same day – a practice that is tantamount to bullying and which causes many people severe distress.

The ICO is determined to clamp down on such activities and more prosecutions are certain to follow.

KwikChex, as part of its Timeshare Task Force Initiative has recently engaged with the ICO to tackle this problem within the timeshare and holiday discount club sector. Many rogue businesses that attempt to scam existing timeshare owners or sell consumers bogus or illegal purported holiday discount schemes start their fraudulent processes with unsolicited contact – including cold calling, text messages and emails.