Complaint to Data Protection Commissioner resolved

liamo

Hi,

A number of months ago I made a complaint to the office of the Data Protection Commissioner about NewTel - a telecomms company.

I had been receiving a number of sales calls from them. During each call I (or my wife) instructed them that we were happy with our current provider and would not be doing business with Newtel now or ever. The calls continued ...

I wrote to NewTel instructing them under the terms of the Data Protection Acts to remove me from the marketing database. The calls continued ....

Following an initial exchange of emails with the Commissioner's office, I heard nothing for a while. Then I received a detailed email (attached below) which addressed my complaint satisfactorily.

The point of this post is to encourage people to find out what their rights are under the Data Protection Acts, and to report companies who abuse those rights. They take these things seriously at the the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

You can find out loads more at http://www.dataprotection.ie.

Regards,

Liam





Brief Description : Your complaint against Newtel

I refer to your complaint on 26/01/2006 concerning an unsolicited telephone
call which you received from NewTel Communications Limited.

Your's was one of a number of complaints which this office received about
the activities of NewTel. Initially we did not receive any significant
cooperation from NewTel, who did not appear to grasp the importance of the
matter. During the investigation, a meeting with NewTel's managing director
proved fruitless.

All cases were being pursued with a view to prosecution. However, in
February 2006 NewTel acknowledged the failures of their systems which had
resulted in unsolicited calls being made. New robust procedures were
introduced and this coincided with the appointment of a new managing
director.

The Data Protection Commissioner informed NewTel that he was willing to
delay prosecutions in order to give NewTel a reasonable opportunity to
demonstrate that it was now fully respecting its data protection
obligations.

In June 2006 an inspection team visited NewTel's premises and audited its
marketing operation. The audit confirmed that the new procedures were being
followed. NewTel had contacted over 500,000 subscribers since these new
procedures were adopted and no valid complaint had been received by this
office in that period.

The Data Protection Commissioner is satisfied that the problems which
existed prior to February 2006 will not be repeated, that NewTel has
admitted its failures and has put in place new robust procedures to ensure
that it shall respect people's privacy rights.

Given that the Commissioner's primary role is to ensure that data
controllers respect their data protection obligations and that the rights
of data subjects are upheld and given that appropriate remedial action has
been taken, he does not believe that a prosecution in this instance would

serve a worthwhile purpose and would not be a reasonable use of resources.
Consequently, he has decided not to pursue prosecutions.

In trust this concludes matters to your satisfaction. Should you receive
unsolicited marketing calls from any data controller in the future please
do not hesitate to contact this office. The resolution of this case will
not preclude this office from taking different action in other cases.

Sarsfield

I'm quite impressed with that. An effective investigation with a positive result and a fair & balanced decision.

Savman

Proper order :cool:

TempestSabre

Good post!

miju

g'wan THE MAN , sticking it to em good and proper , least some government depts can do their job

AntiRip

I myself got a call from them today. I thoroughly agree with everything said here about unsolicited calls. Is anyone with this crowd? Their offer is very good e22.95 a month (rent included in that) for unlimited calls

Sizzler

Fair play

I'm actually getting calls of eircom despite asking them 3 times to stop calling me. If I'm here to take another call from them then I'm gonna complain to the DPC but I have to say its amusing when they do call to tell them what I pay now with a rival provider and I know they cant match it so they just hang up

Sponge Bob

Note the caller id down when you get called. if you cannot ring that number back ( eg the caller id is misleading or false) then thats illegal.

faceman

Sponge Bob wrote:

Note the caller id down when you get called. if you cannot ring that number back ( eg the caller id is misleading or false) then thats illegal.

are you sure about that? Have you a source?

Good to see a happy end to this story, not just for the OP but other punters who were no doubt affected.

I had a complaint with DP last year but it wasnt solved to my satisfaction.

Sizzler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Note the caller id down when you get called. if you cannot ring that number back ( eg the caller id is misleading or false) then thats illegal.

Sounds great SB but not show me where you got that one from

Theres plenty of clowns ringing on 00800 numbers but dont see anything happening and is unlikely to do so as they are not in the ROI hence cant be pursued.