Companies and directors to be fined up to 1 million pounds if found to be duping customers

LONDON, U.K. - In its latest bid to crackdown on companies making cold calls, the government has now said that such companies could face fines up to 1 million pounds and people running these companies too would be fined up to 500,000 pounds. 

The new fines have been introduced after it was found that bosses dodge the hefty fines by declaring bankruptcy. 

Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham explained, “We are inundated with complaints from people who are left shaken and distressed by the intrusion on their daily lives. Making directors responsible will stop them ducking away from fines by putting their company into liquidation. It will stop them leaving by the back door as the regulator comes through the front door.”

The new penalties will be imposed from spring 2017, holding all the directors responsible for running such a scam network.

In the U.K., nuisance calls make up to 40 percent of the total calls each year with the elderly people being most vulnerable to such calls. 

Managing director of home and legal services, Alex Neill said, "This is a massive victory for the hundreds of thousands of people who supported our nuisance calls campaign. It's good to see the Government has listened to consumers and will be introducing new rules to hold company directors to account. This legislation will stop rogues dodging fines for bombarding consumers with nuisance calls and side-stepping the rules by closing one business and re-establishing a new one.”

According to a call blocking firm - TrueCall, 25 percent of the people in the U.K. receive at least 11-20 calls a month and older customers receive 46 percent of such calls. Those calls often offer financial products such as Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), banking products and also encourage people making accident claims.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has already penalised companies that send at least eight million spam texts and make 70 million such calls, with a fine of 3.7 million pounds.

Matt Hancock, Digital and Culture Minister said, “Nuisance callers are blight on society, causing significant distress to elderly and vulnerable people. We have been clear that we will not stand for this continued harassment and this latest amendment to the law will strike another blow to those businesses and company bosses responsible.”

However, some experts sounded a warning claiming that while few of such companies take advantage of telemarketing to dupe customers, at times companies making genuine calls regarding banking services but still get blocked due to the nature of the call. The new generation call blocking techniques have undoubtedly worked but because of such cold calls, customers have often been deprived of urgent financial calls as well.