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Business and Other Briefings
OFT: The Office of Fair Trading has told 6 debt management businesses and 4 cold-calling companies to stop using unsolicited & misleading calls to advertise their services or face formal enforcement action. The action has been taken after the OFT and the Information Commissioner's Office received complaints from consumers that they had been cold-called either without prior consent, or despite registering with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS).
The OFT also found that most of the information given to consumers was potentially misleading or inaccurate, or missed out vital facts about the purpose of the call and the identity of the caller, for example:
* some calls misled consumers into believing that they were one of the 'few chosen individuals' contacted as part of a government scheme to help wipe out consumer debt
* some recipients were transferred to a commercial debt management business on the pretext of talking to a not-for-profit debt adviser and
* once referred to a different business, consumers were often not told that there was a fee payable for both the initial advice and the debt solutions offered
Press release ~ Information Commissioner's Office ~ Guidance for subscribers on the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 - Part 1: Marketing by electronic means ~ OFT Debt Management Guidance for licensees (September 2008) ~ Telephone Preference Service (TPS) ~ Directgov - advice on dealing with debt
WAG: The Welsh Assembly Government has published a research report investigating the barriers that SMEs in Wales face in accessing public sector contracts. The research focussed around the initial contact that firms have with public sector buyers: the pre-qualification processes and the use of ‘approved lists’.
The key finding is that a large proportion of the information sought from suppliers is common to all procurements, and yet the information is sought time & again, in slightly different formats.
The headline recommendations are that these processes should be standardised and that a database should be established to hold common core data on all suppliers, to be used by buyers as part of each pre-qualification exercise.
The headline recommendations are that these processes should be standardised and that a database should be established to hold common core data on all suppliers, to be used by buyers as part of each pre-qualification exercise.
The decision of the Court of Appeal in respect of Procter & Gamble UK.
