Telecoms operator TalkTalk has been fined £750,000 by regulator Ofcom for making abandoned and silent calls to potential customers.
More than 9,000 of these nuisance calls were made via two call centers as part of a telemarketing campaign in 2001
Ofcom said TalkTalk had exceeded the limit for such calls on four separate occasions in a seven week period.
The silent and abandoned calls are often caused by answer machine detection (AMD) technology where software wrongly detects that an answering machine has kicked in and cuts the call.
Claudio Pollack of Ofcom said: “Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers.
“Companies must abide by the law and Ofcom’s policies. If they fail to do so then Ofcom will take firm action.”
A TalkTalk spokesperson said: “TalkTalk demands high standards from the companies it works with and as a result TalkTalk immediately stopped using these suppliers.”
Via: BBC