Back in April 2014 the Government introduced changes to the law that worked to quicken the ICO’s (Information Commissioner’s Office) process for punishing/charging telemarketing companies who had been proven to cause “substantial damage or substantial distress” to consumers they had been cold calling. These changes were formed following a Government Report into Nuisance Calls, something which was broadly welcomed by consumers fed up with answering calls to a stranger on the end of the line asking how their day had been.
The Report pressed for some scope on tighter regulations – e.g. compulsory Call Line Identification and lower threshold for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) enforcement action and for ICO and Occam to use their powers more broadly and frequently to punish wrongdoers.
The key elements to any bill regulating telesales calls are ongoing, targeted enforcement action; improving the tracing of nuisance calls and messages; effective coordinated action, including a review of the impact of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
It is clear from previous surveys that the TPS can only achieve so much. It is only as good as business allows it to be as there is little that the TPS can do to stop companies ignoring the TPS register. The challenge that this report posed, and the subsequent changes to legislation, therefore, was to curtail bad and illegal practice while allowing legitimate marketing and reasonable unsolicited calls, as they do still represent the lifeblood of many companies who need to generate leads.
Here at VST we have always taken every step to ensure our business to business prospects are not listed with the TPS, and even before the Report was published and the legislation changed our data sourcing service ensures that data is regularly cleansed, leads called are genuine prospects and there won’t be any complaints about unsolicited calls.
We take these steps because we realise that unsolicited calls are irritating and time wasting and, quite frankly, a waste of our time as they won’t result in a qualified lead. Scattergun marketing is needlessly disruptive; it benefits few, and at worst is unscrupulous and frustrating.
For an ethical approach to appointment setting call us on 0800 085 5574 or click to fill in our enquiry form.
