Keeping up the PECR: ICO fines two marketing text pests £330k for sending 2.6 million messages Two businesses that dispatched more than 2.6 million nuisance text messages seeking to exploit lower household incomes during Britain’s first lockdown are nursing a combined financial penalty of £330,000 from the UK’s data watchdog. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said it had received 10,000 official moans against …
> I wonder whether any of the fine will be collected...?
Don't be naive. Those companies are made to disappear as soon as the law catches up with them, and then reappear immediately under a new, innocent face.
Fining those companies is as efficient as trying to reprimand the weather. You can't win that game of whack-a-mole, only personal fines on their owners would have any effect (assuming they are not living in some faraway country, well out of reach).
"...only personal fines on their owners would have any effect"
In theory the ICO has the power to collect from the Director(s) in the event the company goes insolvent without paying the fine - they need to start making use of it, and possibly some additional legislation should be passed barring anybody with any outstanding fines from being a company director.
Aye, there's the run.
Mechanisms exist on both sides of the pond to hold people, not just companies, personally liable for company actions. But nobody uses them in most cases.
Even with companies that don't go bankrupt and that do pay the fine, they just pass the cost onto the customer. Until they start fining the Chair of the Board or the entire Board, nothing will change.
And the fine itself was woefully small.
Directed at lower income households and in violation of regulations?
Just £330.000?
That's £0.127 per message.
An absurd pittance joke.
They will do it again and next time they will hide their responsibility deeper down.
"No, it wasn't us guv'nor ... "
The owners/directors/managers of these marketing (?) companies (from the top down) should be held directly responsible and fined in such a way that guarantees there will not be a next time.
The scumbags didn't give a monkey's toss about the possibility of a fine, they knew them to be low and simply factored them into what they charge their clients.
And those who received the results of these violations, usually larger companies or corporations, should also be held responsible.
Avon may not have sent the texts but be quite sure they knew all about it.
How could they not?
Absolutely everyone involved knew what was going on.
The only way these bastards will learn is through a nice big hole in the profits of all involved.
O.
Reasonable deniability? They knew they are breaking the law, so they do it in a way you can't clearly prove it's them, so legally they can't be touched.
Unlike their fly-by-night accomplice, they can't just disappear in thin air and then reappear under a new name, so they needed a fuse, something which would deflect the fine from themselves.
There is nothing stopping Avon salespeople (who are independent agents) from drumming up business however they like, or indeed a 3rd-party firm marketing to those agents as a source of leads.
Avon's customer are the agents really, not the end consumer of their products.
Probably all that Avon can do is to remind their agents of the law and the dangers of using unvetted leads - but they can't enforce it.
"Probably all that Avon can do is to remind their agents of the law and the dangers of using unvetted leads - but they can't enforce it."
Trademarks need to be protected. By passing themselves off as Avon they were devaluing the trademark and Avon can take action for that. We often hear of trademark disputes where there isn't really any possibility of confusion when small business has a name that sounds like some megacorp that starts throwing its weight around. This really the sort of situation where it should be used.
Explained in the article - money made by passing leads onto an Avon "rep" who's really self-employed. What Avon could do would be to take them (directors personally and company) to court for defamation (it reflects badly on their reputation) and the trademark related offence of passing off.
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