Coastal Calling – Fine Still Outstanding

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Coastal Windows & Conservatories (UK) is still being chased to pay the £40,000 fine imposed by the Information Commissioner’s Office after the firm was found guilty back in August 2024.

CWC (Coastal Windows & Conservatories) made over 30,836 unsolicited marketing calls in total between January and March 2023 to numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). In those three months, the firm made 49,592 calls.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and TPS received numerous complaints from people variously saying they had not consented to receiving calls or received repeated calls despite requests to stop.

Inefficient systems

CWC had tried to convince the ICO that it had as policy in place to prevent calls to TPS registered numbers and a system for taking people of a call list (and added to a ‘do not call’ list) but the policy and supporting systems were not efficient.

CWC employs a team of outbound callers. It also collects leads from its website and from the use of door-to-door salespeople. Calls were not recorded as is customary for an outbound call operation.

CWC does not utilise email, automated calling or SMS marketing.

Dumping themselves in it

CWC provided a call script that ultimately proved detrimental to its own case to avoid a fine – the script asked it the recipient of the call would be interested in windows, doors, a conservatory, facias, soffits, guttering or a kitchen. The ICO could see that those questions would be irrelevant if the person being called had already been canvassed and qualified by a door-to-door salesperson.

The entire investigation ran from May 2023 until August 2024. The fine should have been paid by September 2024 and would have been discounted to £32,000. If the decision had been challenged, the 20 per cent discount would have been lost.

Picture: CWC supplies top of the range products including bi-folds and sliding doors and sources from some of the biggest names in the industry including Solidor and Ultraframe.

Article written by Cathryn Ellis
16th December 2024

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