Two North West firms have been fined as part of a crackdown on nuisance marketing by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Goody Market in Liverpool and TFLI in Macclesfield were fined a total of £120k for sending out spam texts.
Goody sent out 111,367 texts, while TFLI sent more than 1.19m of them.
“Firms cannot get away with failing to follow the rules designed to protect people from the irritation and, on occasions, distress nuisance calls, emails and texts cause,” said Andy Curry, ICO enforcement group manager.
“I would urge anyone bothered by nuisance marketing to report it to us. Your reports help us take action against firms like those we have fined today, putting a stop to the trouble they cause.”
Goody Market operates an insurance comparison website and has also been ordered by the ICO to stop illegal marketing or face further legal action. The texts were sent using people’s information sourced from another firm and acquired on behalf of the company by a data broker.
The company wasn’t able to provide evidence that people had agreed to receive the messages as it had relied on “verbal assurances” from the data broker that the details had previously been used for text messaging purposes.
Bollington-Based TFLI was fined for sending around 1.19 million spam text messages promoting a loan website. ICO received 793 complaints about the messages, which were sent using personal details provided by other companies.
