01618703444

This guy keeps phoning my elderly mother and tries to get her to invest in some scheme, he also tries to get her to press 8 on her phone - not sure why

Pressing 8 will connect her to a premium rate scam line I expect

Eco warriors flogging insulation etc.

Recorded message flogging Solar Panels.  When you try to call the number back, surprise-surprise you get the "there is a fault" message.   If I can find their Managing Directors home number, I wonder how he'd like being called every morning at 03:15 ?

Free calls and solar panels offer - how many more of these scam calls today?

Had a call this morning trying to 'give' me solar panels.  Presumably if i agreed they would take all the profits from the subsidy scheme and leave me with next to nothing. I'm getting so many of these calls that I have just invested in a phone which can block calls from specified numbers.  I'm not sure that will work because presumably they will just call from a different number next time.

THEY ARE A SCAM. I HAVE JUST HAD ANOTHER MANCHESTER ECO ENERGY NUMBER TRY IT ON

I called Ofgem and they said it was a SCAM and that the only recognised non-profit supplier was Ebico

www.ofgem.gov.uk
Team Telephone: 020 7901 7295
Fax: 020 7901 7066
Email: consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk

Action Fraud 0300 123 2040
WWW.ICO.GOV.UK to report the call for ignoring TPS - easy online form under marketing calls

Keep getting recorded dialler calls from this number. Says they are "eco energy" and offering govt. sponsored "free" solar panels.  They are NOT the "eco energy uk" based in Kendal-spoke to this guy and he is being inundated with complaints about this scam company which is nothing to do with him.

Recorded message saying it's "Eco Energy" - hung up at that point.  This kind of crap is bad enough at normal times, but at 8:20pm on a Sunday night it's just taking the piss.

I dialed 666 and their telephone burst into flames; the screams were insufferable.
Reported to the www.ico.gov.uk and had a bottle of whiskey in the bath to celebrate.

Second scam call today (first one was pension scam from different number) - this one also recorded message but something to do with solar panels. Putting the phone down didn't stop the call - eventually stopped by unplugging from wall socket! Signed up with TPS but these scammers aren't bothered!

I am registered with TPS, what good it does I don't know. Received a call from them today - shortly after another cold call - why does the ICO not do something hard about this

It does but perhaps you're imprisoned in a call-centre and only read the red-top tabloids...

Good reporting them to the ICO. The criminal fraudsters like Anthony Simister who run scams like to plant stooges on these forums to discourage honest folk from contacting the ICO or Ofcom. Ignore them. Data criminals don't want the hassle, bad publicity or fines, and have big payoffs to make to stay in business. Pay them back with hassle.  I've bookmarked the ICO complaint form and report each and every call now via the form on www.ico.gov.uk : https://www.snapsurveys.com/swh/surveylogin.asp?k=134674895144

Here's the latest fine for a dodgy company caught with its trousers down and breaking the law:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2013.aspx

News release: 20 March 2013

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has served a monetary penalty of £90,000 to a company that has blighted the public with thousands of unwanted marketing calls.

DM Design, based in Glasgow, has been the subject of nearly 2,000 complaints to the ICO and the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). The company consistently failed to check whether individuals had opted out of receiving marketing calls – in clear breach of the law - and responded to just a handful of the complaints received.

In one instance an employee refused to remove a complainant’s details from the company’s system and instead threatened to “continue to call at more inconvenient times like Sunday lunchtime”.

The monetary penalty is the first the ICO has issued for a serious breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) relating to live marketing calls. This latest penalty comes after the joint owners of a company, which was responsible for sending hundreds of thousands of spam texts, received penalties totalling £440,000 in November last year.

The ICO has informed two more companies that it is intending to impose significant penalties over breaches of the law, with a final decision likely in the coming weeks. A further ten companies are subject to ongoing investigation for cold-calling and sending spam text messages.

Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham, said:

“Today’s action sends out a clear message to the marketing industry that this menace will not be tolerated. This company showed a clear disregard for the law and a lamentable attitude toward the people whose day they were disturbing. This is not good enough.

“This fine will not be an isolated penalty. We know other companies are showing a similar disregard for the law and we’ve every intention of taking further enforcement action against companies that continue to bombard people with unlawful marketing texts and calls.

“All of this work has been made possible thanks to the information we are receiving from the public, which has assisted our investigation team in identifying the companies making these calls.”

View a copy of the DM Design monetary penalty notice

The ICO and OFCOM, who are responsible for regulating silent calls, work closely together and will be publishing an open letter to the marketing industry reminding companies that they must comply with the legal and regulatory measures in place. Failure to do so will lead to enforcement action, with the ICO able to issue penalties of up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the PECR, and OFCOM having the power to issue penalties of up to £2,000,000 over breaches of rules linked to abandoned and silent calls.

The ICO has setup a online reporting tool which people can use to send us the details of any unwanted marketing texts and calls. View the reporting tool, which has already received nearly 140,000 responses since it was setup in March last year.



Notes to Editors

1. The Information Commissioner’s Office upholds information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

2. The ICO has specific responsibilities set out in the Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

3. The ICO is on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and produces a monthly e-newsletter.

4. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 support the Data Protection Act by regulating the use of electronic communications, including live and automated marketing calls and marketing text messages. The ICO has the power to issue monetary penalties up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the regulations.

5. OFCOM is responsible for regulating abandoned and silent calls under the Communications Act 2003. OFCOM has the power to serve persistent offenders with financial penalties up to £2,000,000 pounds.

This number is sending me insane!!! They call every night at 1800, 2100 and 0300. No matter what I do the calls keep coming - I am going to have to change my number.

Second time this week, at same time - 5.00pm. Pre-recorded message.

What kind of phone connection have you got?  When I don't want to receive calls  - which is most of the time  - I pull the jack plug out of the little box, or switch off the mains supply to the base unit. If it's a call that really matters, the caller will leave a msg on your voicemail.

As a postscript to the DM Designs fine, the Glasgow Herald carried a follow up story on 22 March 2013:



A FORMER worker at a kitchen firm which bombarded people with thousands of unwanted calls has revealed details of what he says were shocking management practices and an "appalling" atmosphere in its call centres.

The ex-staff member claimed Cumbernauld-based DM Design, which has been fined £90,000 after a year-long investigation into its practices, encouraged staff to ignore personal grief of potential customers when trying to close deals and used a system that might have ignored requests for no more calls.

He told The Herald that colleagues would lie about voucher promotions and invent company names to avoid detection while working in a horrible room covered in graffiti and chewing gum.

DM Design was fined after the investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office, which criticised the company's "clear disregard" for law and "lamentable attitude" to the people it disturbed.

The man, who does not wish to be named, worked at the call centre in Kirkcaldy, Fife, for more than a year and said his experiences suggested a fine was inevitable.

He got paid £4.98 an hour to cold call properties in Scotland in an attempt to drum up business, with shifts usually lasting three hours and a team of 60 people on average making calls.

The former worker said: "The atmosphere was appalling. It was full of people who had barely left school.

"The wages were terrible. The bonus was for each 'bite' you get. A bite is a customer's details – whether they own their home, postcode, address, age of their kitchen, bedroom or bathroom.

"For every single bite we got, we were telling them we were giving away 10 vouchers. But we were actually giving a voucher to everybody that got a call, apparently."

If a confirmer called back your bite and managed to arrange a planning design for a kitchen, that meant you got a £3 bonus. That was the incentive."

He said he could make up to 300 calls a shift and was expected to get at least 10 bites by a management team that pressurised employees to close deals.

He said: "The management's pretty shocking in that place.

"I remember getting taken for training sessions by one of the bosses of the company. We asked him what happens if we phoned up and a woman says, 'my husband's died a couple of days ago, I'm really not interested'.

"Anybody with a heart would say, 'right, I'm really sorry for calling you, I'm really sorry, it won't happen again'. But this boss said 'well, I had a guy who called up someone once and the woman said her husband just died, and he managed to turn that into a next day sale'.

"I think everybody in the room thought that was disgusting."

Employees would make up company names when calling to avoid suspicion, according to the worker.

He said: "They change their name all the time from [things like] Davis & Dean to McAllister & Fitzgerald. They just pick random names like surnames of supervisors and staff that work there. They don't like saying DM Design. I think they assume they will just get hung up on."

When he first joined he would work through pages of a phone book and make calls from a "dirty horrible room with graffiti drawn on the walls and chewing gum under the desk".

The room was done up when a new automatic calling system was bought in.

He wasn't sure if the computer mechanism that logged requests not to be called back actually worked.

He left the firm when he found a better-paid job and was unsurprised when he heard of the fine. He said: "It was obvious they were doing something wrong. We were doing what we were told. It was up to them to figure out whether or not it was legal."

The Herald put the allegations to DM Design, which said no director was available and declined to comment.

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The Directors of DM Designs are Donald Macleod and Elizabeth Ann Macleod who reside at 48 Kenilworth Road, Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire.  Both have fingers in other pies according to Companies House records and have had interests in companies now dissolved.

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Donald Macleod was the subject of an article in the Scotsman dated 26 July 2002:

A WEALTHY businessman has lost an employment tribunal after it was ruled that he had kissed and groped a teenage employee despite his wife being in the next office.

Donald MacLeod, 44, a director of the family firm DM Design Bedrooms Ltd, of Cumbernauld, was yesterday ordered to pay 1,070 in compensation to a telesales canvasser, Lindsay Wallace, 19, for unlawfully sexually discriminating against her.

The millionaire businessman had asked to see the girl’s tattoos before the tribunal heard how he tried to kiss her and put his hands on her bottom.

At an earlier hearing in May, MacLeod admitted asking her for a kiss in exchange for a piece of wood, but claimed Miss Wallace initiated the advance.

Miss Wallace, from Eastfield, Cumbernauld, had asked MacLeod for a piece of wood in July last year. As they went to collect it from the warehouse, he inquired about her tattoos.

Miss Wallace, who has a tattoo on each arm, three on her hip, and one on her thigh and ankle, added: “He asked to see any ones that weren’t on show. I declined.”

After finding a piece of wood, they returned to an office within the building.

Miss Wallace continued: “He then approached me, tried to place his hands on me, put them around me, then on my bottom. I backed off and asked ‘How do I get out of the office?’ I was confused and very upset.”

MacLeod denied Miss Wallace’s version of events. However, he conceded that he did ask the teenager for a kiss, before insisting that she then made an advance on him.

In a written judgment yesterday, the Glasgow tribunal ruled: “We had no hesitation in preferring the evidence of the applicant to the evidence of Mr MacLeod. We made a close examination of the demeanour of each when giving evidence. We considered Mr MacLeod’s demeanour to be somewhat evasive.”

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What a nice couple!

'Sorry - there is a fault'

Sick to death of these calls, not just from this number but from several others.     And the International calls have increased as well.    My phone can only block 10 calls at a time, but these fraudsters seem to use a variety of numbers, more than 10.     As soon as I delete one to put a new one on to block, another number rings.     I'm with TPS for what it's worth, and have made several complaints to ICO but nothing happens.   How the hell did they get my number in the first place.

6 calls today. Have stopped answering my landline phone