LEADING TELECOMMUNICATIONS companies Vodafone, 02, Eircom and UPC have been prosecuted for spamming customers with unsolicited text messages and phone calls in breach of the Data Protection Acts.
The four companies yesterday pleaded guilty to a list of charges related to making unwanted sales calls and sending text messages for direct marketing purposes without the consent of recipients.
The cases were brought before the Dublin District Court by the Data Protection Commissioner on foot of complaints by consumers subjected to repeated “cold” calls and unwanted messages after they had expressly asked not to be contacted for marketing purposes.
The worst offender was UPC, which was fined €7,100 for 18 separate breaches of the Act relating to four complaints to the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. In one case, the court heard how the company attempted to call a customer 225 times over a 20-day period between May and June of 2009.
The subscriber, who operated a property letting company, had cancelled her company’s 56 accounts with UPC the previous month but was repeatedly contacted by sales agents asking her to upgrade even though the accounts had already been closed. When she contacted UPC, asking for her number to be removed from the company’s direct marketing list, it contacted her via e-mail and insisted this could only be done if she supplied a landline number instead.
Assistant commissioner at the Data Protection Commissioner’s office Tony Delaney said the customer had contacted the commission in a state of desperation, saying she felt like she was being harassed.
“Clearly, this is one of the most serious cases, in terms of phone calls, that has ever come before the Data Protection Commission,” Mr Delaney told the court.
UPC was also convicted of making unsolicited sales calls to three other subscribers after they had expressly requested not to be contacted for marketing purposes.
Imposing sentence, Judge Bridget Reilly said she was not convinced UPC had been “fully co-operative” with the Data Protection Commission’s attempts to resolve the matter in relation to one of the complainants.
Vodafone was fined €3,850 for five infringements of the Data Protection Acts, following complaints by four consumers who had received unsolicited marketing texts.
One customer was still receiving unwanted marketing messages, despite opting out of the company’s marketing list over 12 months ago, and had received one just a few days before the current proceedings, Mr Delaney told the court.
Vodafone’s head of regulatory affairs, Julian Hayes, told the court the company fully accepted it had breached the regulations, and regretted any annoyance to subscribers, insisting it was never its intention to “aggravate its customers”.
Mr Hayes said the issues had arisen in relation to a third party working on behalf of Vodafone, which had failed to take account of several subscribers expressing their wishes not to be contacted for marketing purposes, and that it was reviewing its operations regarding the use of such third parties.
Following the case, the company issued a statement, saying it “sincerely regretted” its breaches of the data protection regulations.
Despite the fact they admitted similar breaches of the acts, no convictions were recorded against O2 and Eircom after they agreed to make separate €2,000 donations to designated charities.
Speaking after the cases, deputy data protection commissioner Gary Davis said the commission wanted to send a strong message across the sector that companies needed to comply with the regulations governing the use of personal data.
He said the prosecutions were the result of complaints from consumers, some of whom were “at their wits’ end” after being repeatedly contacted in aggressive marketing communications.
Mr Davis said consumers should not receive cold calls or spam texts from these companies unless they had agreed or had a preference for such contacts recorded on a national register.
