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Energy Firm Slapped With $65,000 Fine For Making 1.5 Million Nuisance Calls (theregister.co.uk)
A UK firm offering people energy-saving solutions has been fined after making almost 1.5 million unsolicited calls without checking if the numbers were registered on the UK's opt-out database. From a report: Southampton-based Home Logic used a dialler system to screen the telephone numbers that it planned to call against the Telephone Preference Service register, which allows people to opt out of receiving marketing calls. This system was unavailable for at least 90 days out of the 220 between April 2015 and March 2016 due to technical issues -- but that didn't stop Home Logic from continuing to make phone calls. Some 1,475,969 were made in that time. And, as a result, Blighty's data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office received 133 complaints about the firm from people who had registered with the TPS and did not expect to be picking up the phone to marketeers. It ruled that the biz had breached the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations and duly fined it 50,000 pound ($64,500).
Seriously, how much "profit" do you think companies make doing this kind of thing?
The company in question sells "home energy solutions" - think insulation, new windows, solar panels, that kind of thing. For that kind of capital expenditure, the conversion rate for cold calling will be well below 1% - so those 1.5 million calls will translates to maybe 15,000 leads, and maybe one-tenth that number of actual sales.
It's a reasonably competitive market, so margins won't be that fat to begin with. Now let's think about the cost per sale. Let's assume that for each actual sale you have to talk to 20 potential customers, and provide 5 "obligation-free quotes". Let's say each "prospect" conversation creates 20 minutes of work, each quote requires another 1.5 hours (minimum, because typically those require an in-person visit) - altogether that's about 2 days of (fairly well paid) sales time to make each sale. That's before paying sales commission, and even longer before actually ordering, delivering, fitting, inspecting and certifying a single tile.
Granted, it's not a monumental fine - but it's way, *way* more than "10 hours of profit" for this kind of business. 10 days, possibly, but I'd honestly expect it to be closer to 10 weeks.