Main News Desk

Silent Fright: Fifteen Million Hit By Silent Phone Calls Every Week

Consumers Urged To Back Ofcom bid to increase maximum fine on offenders to £2 million

LONDON - January 20, 2010

Fifteen million Britons are plagued by silent phone calls from call centres every week, according to research issued today.

The figure was released as consumers were urged to back a bid to impose a maximum £2 million fine on the culprits.

It came from a Telephone Preference Service poll conducted by Mori to monitor the true scale of the problem in the UK.

The Government is in the final week of a public consultation period over plans to increase the fine on offending companies from £50,000.
Silent calls occur when call centres ring large numbers of people at the same time. Numbers are dialled automatically and customers are supposed to be connected to a call centre agent when they answer the phone. However, the line is silent if no staff are free to speak to them.
The communications regulator Ofcom receives about 400 complaints a month about silent calls. Last year it found that 49% of adults felt "very inconvenienced" by silent calls.

Steve Smith, inventor of nuisance phone-call blocking device trueCall, is behind the call for more pressure to be placed on the Government over the issue.

Smith, who appeared with the device on TV’s Dragons’ Den last year, said: “The research indicates that every week 15 million Brits suffer silent phone calls. An unfortunate group of 7.5 million get five or more a month.

“These calls are the worst type of nuisance phone call because of the anxiety they cause. People fear that burglars are checking whether they are at home, that they are being targeted by a malicious caller or even that their partner is having an affair.

“Banks and debt collection companies are among the worst offenders for silent calling and the current £50,000 maximum fine has done nothing to stop them. Increasing the penalty to £2 million would be a far stronger deterrent and would help stamp out the menace once and for all.

“It is vital that the public contact the Government to let them know the strength of the feeling there is on this issue. We are in the last week of the consultation exercise and time is running is out to make a difference.”

Ofcom investigated BarclayCard in 2008 and ruled it was the most serious case of silent and abandoned calls that they had ever seen. It imposed the £50,000 maximum fine but said it would have fined them more had it been possible.

Ofcom called on the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills to raise the fine last October and the deadline for the public to respond to the plans is Monday, January 25.

The public can register their views by going to www.bis.gov.uk and downloading the form which should be emailed to ihtsham.hussain@bis.gsi.gov.uk one completed. They can also call 0845 015 0010 and ask for a copy to be sent to them in the post.

Pricing and availability

trueCall costs £99.99 from John Lewis, Amazon, the QVC Home Shopping channel and the trueCall website www.truecall.co.uk.

About the company

About trueCall:

The device has been a huge hit after entrepreneur Steve Smith unveiled it on BBC2’s Dragons’ Den last summer. Steve made history after all five Dragons wanted to invest in it.

trueCall intercepts all calls to home landlines. If it recognises them as a friend or a member of the user's family - numbers on a “star list” created by the user - it lets them through as normal.

If the caller's number is on a “zap list” - numbers of telemarketers or other nuisance callers - the device answers it, and all future calls from that number, with an automated message which means the phone does not ring at all.

If the system doesn't recognise the caller's number, or the caller withholds their number, it asks them who they are, puts them on hold, rings the user's phone and allows them to decide how they want to handle the call.

See more at www.truecall.co.uk

Contact details

Contact David Brown or Fiona Bates at LEWIS PR on 0207 802 2626.

Supporting materials

About Silent Calls:

Silent calls are generated by equipment used in call centres to increase productivity. These technologies include predictive diallers and Answering machine detection. Despite legislation from Ofcom in 2006 that effectively made silent calls illegal, people are still receiving silent calls. Ofcom has asked the Government to increase the maximum penalty, recommending that it be raised from £50,000 to £2 million. Ofcom are taking pre-emptive action because there is concern that this will move to mobiles - in the 6 months to June 2009, 11% of people surveyed by Ofcom received silent calls on their mobile number (where the inconvenience and anxiety is even more serious).

Bookmarklets:

Recent Press Releases

2010 Archive

2009 Archive

2008 Archive

2007 Archive

Jump to: