Ofcom has fined Barclaycard £50,000 - the maximum amount
possible - for
breaching its rules on silent and abandoned calls, and said it
would have liked to have fined it more for its "serious and
persistant" breach.
Ofcom said silent calls are a significant cause of inconvenience
and anxiety for thousands of people every month. Most silent calls
are not generated with malicious intent, but occur when call
centres using automated calling systems generate more calls than
their available agents can deal with.
When the person called answers the telephone, there is no agent
available, resulting in silence on the line.
Ofcom published its rules on silent calls in 2006, including
three key requirements:
1. Abandoned call rates must be no more than 3% of all live
calls made in any 24 hour period for each campaign.
2. All abandoned calls must carry a short recorded information
message identifying the source of the call.
3. Calling line identification (CLI) must be included on all
outbound calls generated by automated calling systems. CLI allows
people to dial 1471 and access the telephone number of the person
or organisation calling them.
Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said of the Barclaycard
breach, "Taken as a whole, this is the most serious case of
persistent misuse by making silent and abandoned calls that Ofcom
has ever investigated. Had we not been limited by the statutory
maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to
reflect this misuse."
Ofcom investigated Barclaycard from 1 October 2006 to 10 May
2007, and found that it had "made an extremely high number of
silent calls where the people receiving the calls had no method of
knowing who had made them".
The investigation also found that some of Barclaycard's call
centres had no procedures in place to prevent people receiving
repeated abandoned calls over a short period of time.
Ofcom has previously fined Abbey National, Complete Credit
Management, Space Kitchens, Bracken Bay Kitchens, Carphone
Warehouse and Toucan for breaches of its rules on silent and
abandoned calls.