Barclaycard, Britain's biggest credit card company, has been fined £50,000 by the telecoms regulator for making thousands of silent and abandoned calls to UK customers.
The silent calls caused inconvenience and anxiety for many customers, some even fearing they had been maliciously prank-called, an Ofcom's investigation found.
Problems arose when call centres using automated systems placed more calls than their agents could deal with, leaving many consumers picking up a silent phone call.
The investigation also found that some of Barclaycard's call centres had no procedures to prevent people receiving repeated abandoned calls over a short period of time.
The fine is the maximum Ofcom is allowed to impose.
Sadly as they say that is the maximum Ofcom can impose. Tonight Barclaycard and the cunts who run it are raising glasses to the fine and laughing long and hard at the customers that they distressed.
Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said: '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 said those who received the silent calls from Barclaycard had no way of knowing who had made them.
The regulator said abandoned calls must make up no more than 3 per cent of all live calls in a 24-hour period and all abandoned calls must carry a short recorded message identifying who it is from.
All calls from automated calling systems must also allow people to dial 1471 to find the telephone number of the person or organisation calling them.
Kitchens, Bracken Bay Kitchens, Carphone Warehouse and Toucan for breaching rules on silent and abandoned calls.
Barclaycard apologised to its customers today and said it accepted the ruling.
'Barclaycard does not dispute Ofcom's findings and accepts the resulting fine,' the company said in a statement.
'Many of these calls were made with the intention of bringing potentially fraudulent activity to the attention of the card holder.
'Nevertheless, we recognise that all calls, irrespective of the purpose, should be made in the right way and we accept that our processes, in place at the time of the review by Ofcom, were inadequate.
'As a result, we offer a full apology for any inconvenience and distress to our customers that these calls caused.'
Oh dear, how sad, we accept a piss poor slap across the wrist. Maybe one of the overpaid buffoons in the House of Commons could take some time out from fiddling expenses and hiring rent-boys and press for Ofcom to fine companies like Barclaycard an unlimited amount.
2 people have spoken:
For a bank that's chump change. If you want the overpaid buffoons to do something about it, you'll have to convince them there's a cut in it for them. Then they'll jack up the fines as high as they can. But then they'll be using the money to further screw you guys over.
Now I think as they made some 7 billion profit that should be the level of the fine.
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