By John Leyden for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Dave King received the money in an out-of-court settlement from
Everyday Financial Solutions, Littlewoods' financial services
business. He had threatened court action after his attempts to
remove his telephone number from Littlewoods' cold-call database
failed, obliging him to pay BT to block calls from the catalogue
firm.
To make matters worse, the calls weren't even directed at King.
The number was held in error as the contact number for someone King
didn't even know.
"Just before Christmas I started receiving promotional phone
calls from Littlewoods - I received 16 calls in one week but they
had my phone number by mistake as they kept asking to speak to
someone else," he explained. "I told them time and time again that
they had the wrong number and they assured me on numerous occasions
that they would sort it out, but the calls continued - even though
they had a legal obligation to correct the data that was held on
their system as soon as possible.
"In the end I had to pay to get BT to put a block on their phone
number so that they couldn't call me," he added.
King, something of a legal eagle, claimed compensation under
Section 13 of the Data Protection Act 1998, for damages incurred
due to the contravention of rights under the Act. The dispute was
settled out of court after Littlewoods agreed to pay £150 and
remove King's details from its databases.
Others subject to similar problems might also be able to claim
compensation, King said.
The Register has copies of the correspondence between
King and Littlewoods, in which the firm apologises but fails to
explain why King's entry was not deleted earlier, despite repeated
promises from telemarketing staff.
Littlewoods Direct Home Shopping declined our invitation to
comment on this story.
© The Register
2007
