Hot and bothered about cold-calling

SOUNDING OFF: Ripped off? Stunned by good value? Write, text or blog your experience to us.

Mairéad Ní Cheallacháin got in touch with us looking for help to get NTL/UPC to stop cold-calling her trying to sell her services she doesn't want. "I have had a number of service problems with NTL in the past, none of which was dealt with even remotely satisfactorily, and if I could think of an alternative TV service I would switch in the morning." She says a detailed account of her various grievances, which she sent in writing a year ago, remains unacknowledged and unanswered.

"I have the basic cable service, and have no interest or desire to have any more channels. Every couple of weeks I get a call on my mobile phone - the call comes up as "private number" - and a sales person launches into a spiel about how they have upgraded the cabling/service in my area, and they go on to offer me some unbeatable offer - broadband, satellite TV or a combination of both - but which invariably involves me paying more money to NTL."

Every time she informs the salesperson she does not wish to change her service, does not wish to receive cold calls from NTL, and asks to be taken off their list for such calls. And every time she is assured that this will be done, "but a few weeks later another call comes and we go through the same conversation. Recently, when I was particularly irate, I was put through to a supervisor, who assured me that I was being taken off their list for calls, but he said that there was a different division or department who also make sales calls, and, although there is not supposed to be any crossover of data between the two, he could not guarantee that my details would not be on their database and that I may be called by them."

She says she is not clear about these two divisions of NTL/UPC, "but needless to say last week I got another call from the company selling me services".

She is at a loss now as to what more she can do to stop these calls, which are driving her mad. "Perhaps you or your readers can suggest how I can get through to the company. Are they under any legal obligation to stop contacting me if I request them not to? Is there a regulator or consumer association that can help me? If they would allow their number to show when calling, I could simply not answer, but they hide behind private numbers. Can you help?"

When someone asks to be removed from a marketing list, companies are obliged by data protection law to honour that request.

We contacted UPC and a spokeswoman said that Ní Cheallacháin would be receiving no further marketing calls from UPC. She said that, in keeping with data protection guidelines, it allows 28 days to remove a name from further marketing literature.

"The reason for this timeframe is to ensure that the customer detail is removed adequately from all our marketing databases.

She said that having reviewed our reader's situation "we know that in our first exchange we did not mention the 28-day timeframe, which is unfortunate and would have avoided this situation. We have debriefed all UPC parties involved in this case and reappraised them on existing procedures and scripting to ensure future requests of this nature are dealt with appropriately."