NEWS
Ofcom to tackle repeat silent calls
Ofcom has announced a series of measures to take action against silent calls and published the outcome of a related investigation into seven companies.
Silent calls occur when automated calling systems used by call centres for telemarketing, market research, debt collection and other purposes, generate more calls than the available call centre agents can deal with. When the person dialled answers the telephone, there is no agent available, resulting in silence on the line. These abandoned calls can cause significant anxiety and annoyance.
Seventy per cent of the complaints Ofcom receives about silent calls are from consumers receiving two or more silent calls a day from the same company, often over a period of days or weeks.
Ofcom is proposing a new rule to prevent a company calling an answer phone more than once in any 24-hour period, unless a call centre agent is on hand to answer the call. This would mean that consumers currently worst affected would no longer receive repeat silent calls over the course of a day.
