UK’s Citizens Advice calls for ban on cold calling
18 May 2013
Claims management companies as also financial services firms should be banned from cold calling consumers, according to charity Citizens Advice, after UK telecoms regulator Ofcom revealed that eight in 10 households were regularly receiving nuisance calls.
According to a panel of 850 householders who maintained call logs for four weeks 82 per cent received unsolicited calls, at an average of two a week.
Firms offering to make PPI claims accounted for 22 per cent of the calls, or 51 per cent of identifiable unwanted recorded calls. Next on the list of the most common causes of unwanted calls were energy, market research and insurance with "pension predators", companies offering early access to retirement funds in exchange for a big fee following.
Reacting to the findings, which covered a period in January and February, Citizens Advice chief executive, Gillian Guy, said people were being hounded in their homes by unscrupulous financial firms.
He added, in the absence of a ban on cold calling for financial services, people ran the risk of losing some of their pension to scams or paying upfront fees for services that did not deliver. He said, a ban on cold calling would make it clear that if people were still contacted out of the blue then it was a scam or a service not to be trusted.
According to Ofcom, it would now investigate PPI claims companies specifically in relation to silent and abandoned calls.
Claudio Pollack, Ofcom's consumer group director said Ofcom would use the full range of its powers to tackle abandoned and silent calls, but this was a complex area that required joint action from a number of different agencies and government.
Last month, telecoms firm TalkTalk had to pay a £750,000 fine for making an excessive number of silent or abandoned calls to potential customers (See: UK Telecom regulator Ofcom fines TalkTalk £750,000).
March this year, saw consumer association Which? launch a campaign against nuisance calls and texts.
Which? said 70 per cent of consumers had received an unwanted call in the past three months, and 40 per cent, an unsolicited text.
The campaign urged the Information Commissioner's Office, the Ministry of Justice, Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading to establish joint taskforce to block unwanted calls and texts.
