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Spam: Telephone Soliciting II

Further to a telephone call I received (along with some of you) on the 16th of September, I have just received the following letter from ICSTIS (the regulatory of premium rate telephone numbers in the UK) which basically states the company has been fined £10,000 and barred access to “The Prize Warehouse”‘s service for twelve months (so it’s quite a breach: checking action they’ve taken against other companies shows an “average” of around £1,000 fine and 6 months barring).

Success! Just shows – if you complain to the right people you can get the scumbags removed! I’m just waiting for the response from The Telephone Preference Service and mwhhaa! I’ve actually just received a spam SMS text message to my mobile phone (which is registered with TPS) so I’ll be sending off another complaint in the next day or so.

Read on for a copy of the letter.

ICSTIS
The Independent Committee for the Supervision of
Standards of Telephone Information Services
4th Floor, Clover Building, 4 Maguire Street, London, SE1 2NQ
Tel: 020 7940 7474. Fax: 020 7940 7456
Press Office: 020 7940 7408
Email: secretariat@icstis.org.uk
Web: www.icstis.org.uk

Dr Mr xxxxxxx,

Unsolicited Telephone Marketing – prize competition

I am writing with reference to your complaint about the receipt of an unsolicited telephone call advising the recipient that they had won a prize and which asked them to dial a premium rate number in order to make a claim. Please accept my apologies for the delay in my reply that is unfortunately due to a backlog of complaints.

As you may now be aware, ICSTIS supervises both the content and advertising for premium rate services. ICSTIS develops and applies a Code of Practice to the companies that operate premium rate services (service providers). These companies are bound by their contract with the network operators such as BT, Cable & Wireless and Vodafone to comply with the requirements of this Code. Premium rate numbers are usually prefixed with the 090 code.

An investigation has been undertaken into the promotion of an unsolicited automated telephone message about which you have complained and the ICSTIS Committee has recently found breaches of the ICSTIS Code Of Practice. The promotion of a recorded competition information line was found have been done so inappropriately, as well as being found to be misleading. The promotion failed to meet a number of specific provisions that apply to competition services and the content of the recorded message was found to be unduly delayed. In view of the breaches found, the Committee decided that a fine of £10,000 should be imposed and that access to the service should be barred for twelve months.

Should you wish to purse redress or to ensure that your details have been removed from a company’s databases, we recommend that you contact the company responsible for the service and message directly. In this case, the details we have for the company in question are as follows:

The Prize Warehouse
PO BOX 6017
Basingstoke
RG21 4ZB

You can register your wish not to receive unsolicited telephone marketing calls by contacting the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) on 020 7291 3300.

Individuals whose numbers are already registered with the TPS should contact the Office of the Information Commissioner, the body that enforces data protection and privacy legislation, to register a formal complaint on 01625 545 700.

I hope that this is clear and we would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

xxx xxxx
Case Officer

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