Regulation Hub Update - September 2020

11 Sep 2020

This article is written by Steve Sullivan who is the Deputy Chair of the Contact Centre Council.

The ICO has now racked up 3 separate enforcements and fines of firms breaking the direct marketing rules in 3 months.

The latest company to break the PECR regulations is lead generator Koypo Laboratories, which has been fined £100,000 after being found responsible for the sending of over 21 million unconsented marketing emails to consumers in 2017-18. The emails were promoting Kypo’s ‘Simple PPI Claims’ brand but were all sent by Koypo’s affiliates over which Koypo did not have control. However the ICO ruled (in echoes of the Decision Technologies / Money Supermarket case we covered in the July Update) that the emails were still Koypo’s responsibility.

While the FCA continues the consultation on its proposed guidance for the treatment of vulnerable customers which we covered last month, it is investigating high costs lenders’ ‘re-lending’ to vulnerable and financially vulnerable consumers. The lenders’ marketing approaches include using in-app, online and nudge techniques.

After what seemed to have been a coronavirus-hiatus, another small energy provider has failed. Go Effortless of Staffordshire – which only had less than 3,000 domestic customers – has folded and its customers have been transferred to Octopus Energy.

Bulb has had to pay out £1.7m in compensation and goodwill payments to consumers after a series of historic compliance failings, including switching and billing errors.

Ofcom’s latest consumer research seems to show that nearly everyone is quite happy with their broadband, mobile and landline providers

but if you delve more deeply some interesting detail emerges, especially around contact centre wait times…

Disappointingly, the data is now very old – up to January this year – so doesn’t reflect coronavirus experiences.

No new fines from the PSA, this month, but it has barred two individuals from operating premium rates services for 5 years. Leon Wander and Ofir Sarusy were directors of two firms which the PSA has previously fined for breaking the rules, IT Zone and Tobaji, respectively.