From this date it will be illegal to cold call, SMS or spam businesses that register their telephone numbers with the corporate TPS.
Businesses now covered will include companies and limited liability partnerships and the changes involved will bring both relief and headache to Marketing Departments and business owners.
The general effect is that even for business to business marketing companies must verify that the prospective company contact has not registered with the corporate TPS or has agreed beforehand to receive the promotion. Unsolicited cold calling etc to businesses will no longer be permissible. The provisions however do not cover so-called “junk mail” communications which fall outside the ambit of the regulations.
The Data Commissioner has issued new guidance covering these new regulations on business to business marketing. You can read this in full at:
The positives, depending on your point of view, of the corporate TPS scheme are:
- Registration is free of charge and relatively quick (28 days) to effect.
- The application form to register can be completed online.
- It catches charity fundraisers and political party activists seeking support thereby freeing up valuable management time.
- The scheme only covers unsolicited telemarketing so it allows calls back to customers who have specifically requested quotes.
- Likewise it does not prevent customers calling you as before requesting a quote or corporate information.
- Flexibility (1) you now have a choice to screen unwanted calls to say HR but not to Marketing or Purchasing (see 2 below) and (2) you may even allow chosen suppliers to have preferred use of some TPS registered numbers exceptionally and this will allow you to receive unsolicited calls from them but not from others. Furthermore you can add to this preferred list or remove as you think fit.
Woolley & Co Advice
This is one to look out for. We would advise here however that the granting/retracting of all such explicit consents be made in writing to avoid any dispute. Additionally you could grant such consent for a limited time period again as you think fit. Control is thus given to businesses to determine their own needs.
The downsides of the new corporate TPS extension are:
- It will not ordinarily cover market research or opinion pollsters so these will still be permitted to come through even though you may not like them.
- The TPS Register is a list of numbers so it is important to cover all telephone numbers that you wish protection for. Clearly this could be time consuming for large companies with a number of depots/branches and this list must be updated in the event of office relocation.
- As a business you have the obligation to “cleanse” your existing marketing list of TPS registered businesses by 25 June 2004. Therefore you should ensure before this date that any businesses on your list that are TPS registered explicitly now consent (in writing ideally) to continue receiving your marketing information.
- The service for corporate screening of such numbers, will cost you time and money although agencies can do the job for a fee, see www.tps-online.org.uk for possible costs. Typically the license fee for checking opted-out numbers is £3750 p.a. although you can look at www.numbercheck.co.uk for free - subject to their disclaimer however.
- Staff at call centres will have to be trained as will sales staff concerning the extension of the regulations so that consents may be achieved to prevent contravention of the regulations.
- Where external agency call centre staff are used or where external mailing lists are purchased care should be taken to verify that third party practises comply with the regulations. In such circumstances it would be prudent to obtain suitable warranties and indemnities to cover the possible risk of contravention here and Woolley & Co can of course advise as to these in terms of scope and applicability.
- A possible fine of £5000 for each transgression of the rules-which makes the cost of getting B2B calls wrong somewhat costly.
