In previous articles, we spoke only about illegal telemarketing calls in USA. Now, what about Britain and the rest of European Union? Can you just call anyone without being fined? Of course you can not.
Under the privacy and Electronic Communications (an EC Directive) Regulations coming to power from 2003, it is illegal to make calls, transmit voice broadcast messages and send unsolicited faxes to individual people or businesses that have registered their number with Telephone Preference Service (TOS containing numbers of individuals), Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS containing numbers of businesses) or Fax Preference Service (FPS containing fax numbers of both individuals and businesses). These Preference Services in Britain work in the same way as American Do Not Call List.
British individuals and businesses sign up for the Preference Services in case they do not want to receive any cold calling or other types of sales communications. If you are planning to go with you telemarketing or voice broadcasting campaign in Britain, you have to check your contact list against the Telephone Preference databases. However, you don’t have to check your contact list if people you are calling have previously opted in to receive calls from you AND they have a possibility to opt out whenever they wish to.
Using the Telephone Preference database in Britain isn’t free. A basic licence fit for small businesses costs approximately £58. This licence will give you a possibility to check 500 numbers every month. So if your voice broadcasting campaign is on a small scale, this option will be right for you. The full licence costs £6,300 a year. It seems expensive but if you make unsolicited calls and the recipients report your activity, you can be fined £5,000 or even more if the recipient takes this case to the court.
The large Preference Service List charges and the high fines work as a good incentive for each business involved in telemarketing or direct marketing to build their own opt-in contact list. As I said before, you don’t have to check these numbers against the List and you cannot be fined for calling them. Visit our article section to get a further insight into voice broadcasting and telemarketing.
