Late in July, I received an unsolicited sales call. I don’t get many of these as my phone is registered with the Telephone Preference Service, making it illegal for telesales companies to call me as I have expressed a preference not to receive their calls. This didn’t stop Satellite Direct UK calling me. So I complained via the TPS on-line form and forgot about it. When I arrived home from France in mid August, there was a letter of apology from Satellite Direct UK; saying that they were very sorry and that they would remove my details from their system.
Today, I received a sales call from a company calling itself Satcover. Interestingly, Satcover’s phone number is the same as that of Satellite Direct UK. This is because, as a little Internet searching reveals, they are the same company as Satellite Direct UK. Despite promises of removing my details from their database, they didn’t. So, that’s another fine, then. And it seems I’m not the only one complaining.
Update: It would seem that they are breaching the law in more ways than one – and the bit about the call being a “survey” to get around the TPS restrictions is just bollocks.
Here’s the relevant bit of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which came into effect at the end of 2003:
19. (1) A person shall neither transmit, nor instigate the transmission of, communications comprising recorded matter for direct marketing purposes by means of an automated calling system except in the circumstances referred to in paragraph (2).
(2) Those circumstances are where the called line is that of a subscriber who has previously notified the caller that for the time being he consents to such communications being sent by, or at the instigation of, the caller on that line.
…
For the purposes of this regulation, an automated calling system is a system which is capable of –
(a) automatically initiating a sequence of calls to more than one destination in accordance with instructions stored in that system; and
(b) transmitting sounds which are not live speech for reception by persons at some or all of the destinations so called.
No need to invoke the TPS. It’s the law that a robot can’t call you without asking you first.