Companies that use direct marketing will have to tread more carefully in future, following the news that the UK Office of Telecommunications industry watchdog is to introduce a new scheme allowing telephone users to register centrally if they don’t want to receive unsolicited phone calls and faxes. The news comes at the same time as the publication of an Oftel survey, which found that two-thirds of respondents had received unsolicited telephone-selling calls at home. The new code, which Oftel hopes to have in operation this summer for telephone calls, and at a later unspecified date for faxes, is to be voluntary, and will be administered either by the BDMA British Direct Marketing Association or by a body established specifically for that purpose. The details of how it will operate are still being decided, in discussions between Oftel and the BDMA, but the plan is to introduce a similar arrangement to that for junk mail, whereby a central database of all those not wishing to receive correspondence is circulated to BDMA members. Applying a similar scheme to telephone calls has proved more complicated, however, because of the diverse way in which companies select potential customers – often taking names at random from the telephone directory. Addresses for direct mail, by contrast, are normally taken from lists bought from brokers, which can be cross-referenced beforehand. One remedy being considered relies on the fact that telephone marketing is targeted in localised areas – normally close to the company doing the selling: this involves companies being supplied with the names of all those in the vicinity that do not want to be contacted, with details being checked on an individual basis. Oftel’s proposals are wider-reaching than those about to go before the Senate in the US, which are restricted to the use of fax systems and automated diallers, but in both cases the changes are in response to the high level of complaints about unsolicited calls. Currently, UK regulations governing telephone marketing come under the General Branch Systems Licence, and phone users annoyed by unsolicited calls have to contact each company individually asking to be removed from its list.
