Two home improvement companies have been fined a total of £370,000 for making hundreds of thousands of unlawful marketing calls, many designed to strike fear into vulnerable people, following an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Thermotech Wall & Loft Surveys has been fined £240,000 and Jacksons Marketing has been fined £130,000 over calls about loft insulation, home surveys and government grants, in breach of the Privacy & Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
Alongside the fines, both companies were also issued with enforcement notices ordering them to stop making marketing calls without consent.
The ICO says the same person, Thomas Vickrage, from Bournemouth, was a director of Thermotech and suspected of directing the activities of Jacksons Marketing.
Over a six-month period, Thermotech made 575,000 calls to numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service, often using so-called Avatar ‘robo-call’ software operated through overseas call centres.
This is a technology which gave the call recipients the impression they were talking to a person from the UK, but were in fact scripted lines recorded by voice actors and played by call centre agents. Complainants described receiving multiple calls every day, even after explicitly asking for them to stop, with callers identifying themselves as being from a “community protection project”.
Among the complaints received by the ICO were messages from people left distressed and frightened by the volume and nature of the calls, including one which said: “These people keep calling on my landline phone. The calls scare me, I don’t like them. I am a disabled older woman and I do not like these calls.”
The ICO investigation also uncovered WhatsApp messages between Thomas Vickrage and an overseas call centre in which he encouraged agents to dial numbers registered with the TPS. The messages also revealed plans to set up a phoenix company to continue operations if complaints were received.
Meanwhile, Jackson Marketing made more than 230,000 calls to TPS-registered numbers over an 11-month period. The calls related to loft insulation, surveys and government grants. Recipients reported that callers suggested their existing insulation could be hazardous to health and dangerous, and that their personal details had been provided by the government; both of which were false.
One complainant said: “Fear mongering about downgraded and dangerous fibreglass insulation that the government has downgraded from an energy point of view and is hazardous to my health.”
ICO head of investigations Andy Curry said: “These companies targeted some of the most vulnerable in our society. They called older people and those who had clearly asked to be left alone, leaving them frightened to answer their own phones. That is completely unacceptable.
“We will not hesitate to take action against those who exploit people in this way, and we will follow the evidence wherever it leads; including to those who try to evade accountability by creating new companies when complaints mount up.
“Falsely claiming to represent a government scheme to gain people’s trust or suggesting their home could be putting their health at risk, are deeply manipulative tactics. People have a right to protection from this kind of intrusive and misleading contact.”
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