NEWS Premium rate phone regulator ICSTIS has handed out record fines, totalling £1.3m, to companies sending automated marketing messages to consumers down their phone lines.
ICSTIS has noted a dramatic increase in the use of automated caller equipment (ACE) often used to spam users with trumped up competition prizes or special offers and has moved to quash 16 organisations abusing the technology.
Typically such services inform consumers of a competition win, such as a cash prize, car or holiday and encourage them to call back on a given number. In the cases highlighted by ICSTIS such calls were charged at £1.50 per minute and could last for some time.
ICSTIS director George Kidd said such "intrusive, misleading and almost certainly illegal" services are "simply unacceptable".
He urged "the proper authorities" - the Information Commissioner's Office, the Office of Fair Trading and Ofcom - to get involved in bringing action against any companies operating illegally in the premium rate phone industry.
Many of the sixteen services named in the most recent ICSTIS adjudications were hit with £100,000 fines as well as being closed down. Many were UK based, such as Voice Complete (Bath), Voice Priority (Cardiff), Sky Promotions (Cheltenham), Back to Back (Chippenham) and Voice International (Leeds).
However, many others were based outside the UK in locations such as Hong Kong, Mauritius, New York and Singapore.
Allied Telecommunications Ltd, which has registered offices in Finchley, North London, has also been reported to Ofcom for its involvement with all 16 services.
Comments
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1. Geoffrey Darnton
and 0870 numbers?? Could we please have a clamp-down on non-transparent money making use of 0870 numbers? 0900 numbers were supposed to make it clear to the caller that the receiver was receiving money for the call - that is not clear for so-called 'national' numbers used increasingly as non-transparent money-making scams - and they stop consumers from fixing telephone costs by all-in tarriffs - come on telecomms regulators - please clean this up and make charges transparent - and insist companies issue geographic numbers, not just 0870 etc! I suspect the money taken from consumers by 0870 numbers is an order of magnitude greater than 0900 scams!
2. Simon
I agree with Geoffrey Darnton, it's time those in charge stopped the use of the description 'local rate' and 'national rate' for the 0845 and 0870 numbers - or enforce the charges to match the description. There must be very few people now for whom these numbers cost the same as the equivalent geographic number - and for many (including my employer) the difference is something like 700% more to call an 0845 instead of a local number, and 500% more to call it instead of a 'long distance' number !
3. Arthur McGiven
I have noticed a new trick by phone spammers: When I receive one of the "silent calls" and then try to get the caller's number with 1471, I get a British area code followed by a string of zeros. I guess this could be someone forwarding a VOIP call from overseas and then spoofing their caller ID. Presumably the area code is added by the local exchange and can't be spoofed.
One way of bringing this to the attention of authorities would be to point out that if this spoofing technology is permitted, then terrorists, drug smugglers and paedophile rings will use it to evade capture.
4. anonymous
And how much money is actually collected from these 'fines'? Very little, I suspect. Most of the companies involved seem to be 'men of straw' and/or overseas based. What is the point of fining them if they just wind-up the 'company' and reincarnate it next week with a new scam?
5. anonymous
Re Mr Darnton's comment, any telecomms manager who can't negotiate at least 4p a minute rebate from his supplier of 0870 services is not worth his salt! And then the users keep us holding on with interminable self-select options and inane announcements about calls being monitored, etc. OFCOM should make compulsory the parallel publication of a 'normal' telephone number
6. Nick Cole
Further to Anonymous.
It would help if the 0870 companies actually published a range of sub-extensions or menu options so that the choice could be made in advance instead of having to try and interpret an arcane message which invariably doesn't quite capture the issue being phoned about.
And on top of that there shoud be no more incoming lines than operators vailable to take calls. Anything in excess of lines results in a queue and how often do we sit waiting for an answer after having made a choice?
Companies should not be allowed to hide behind the anonymity of 0870 as Anon says but directory services should also be reminded that the Data Protection Act doesn't apply to giving out contact or address data as well. All 0870 users should have a recognisable and usable CLI at all times.
All call centres must also have the ability to transfer an incoming call to the corporate office so that issues can be effectively escalated.
The misuse of 0870 allows those responsible for mismanaging their companies to insulate themselves from the facing the customers. If only they realised the awful public image such activities gave to customers they would soon desist. The bottom-line overrules common-sense.
7. anonymous
I read with intrest Arthur Mcgiven's piece about a local code followed by zeros.
This is easy to do and is just a trick of the PBX/ACD. If calls are routed to/from an ISDN DDI range then the local Exchange will look for a reverse translation for the extension number, in order to pass the full CLI.
A null entry will stop the CLI being passed back. Interestingly it means that the caller is still based in that directory area and not overseas. Doesn't help in finding the caller, but I assume that ICSTIS should have an idea of the area codes that originate for dubious call ventures.