The Hearing Clinic, a company that handles cases for people that have suffered a hearing impairment as a result of workplace noise, is the first business to be fined following the Government’s crackdown on cold-calling.
Hundreds of people affected by unwanted calls from the company lodged formal complaints, and many of them were also subscribers to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
The TPS is an official scheme and allows people to state their wish to not receive uninvited sales or marketing calls, and companies are meant to consult the service when assessing who they are allowed to contact.
As a result of ignoring warnings from the TPS, The Hearing Clinic has been ordered to pay £220,000 by the Ministry of Justice’s claims management regulator.
The regulator controls all companies that offer people the chance to claim compensation for issues ranging from personal injury to mis-sold PPI.
The Hearing Clinic was warned that it will face additional penalties, such as suspension and possible closure, if it chooses to breaks the rules by contacting TPS subscribers again in future.
Any company found to be ignoring the claims management regulator’s code of conduct can face a maximum fine of up to 20 per cent of their annual turnover.
In related news, more insurers are requesting that the Civil Justice Council introduces a limit for how much an individual can claim for workplace hearing loss, because the number of claims is increasing at an unprecedented rate.