Private eye

Nuisance calls are well named. There can be few homeowners who look forward to the lotteries of “Will we get an uninterrupted night’s television?” or, “Will someone wake the baby by calling to enquire about how I purchase my electricity and gas?”. Relatives of new parents know not to call the main house telephone around the witching hour. Many telesales people, it seems, do not.

Unwanted marketing telephone calls are not a new problem. The industry has taken welcome steps over the years to try to alleviate the issue with initiatives such as the telephone preference service (TPS)—now with the force of law behind it—but clearly not everyone is playing by the rules.

Two businesses in particular have been highlighted by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for not only breaching the law by calling people on the TPS list, but also apparently trying to mask their true identities when calling. While they were issued with enforcement notices another company, Amber Windows,