Barclaycard fined £50,000 for silent calls

Ofcom has fined Barclaycard the maximum penalty of £50,000 for making silent phone calls.

The credit card provider has received the maximum possible penalty from regulator Ofcom for the calls, which are generated when an automated calling system generates more calls than staff can deal with.

The watchdog said the case was so serious, the fine would have been even higher if there was no statutory maximum.

Ofcom said silent calls cause thousands of people significant inconvenience and anxiety every month.

Barclaycard was investigated from October 1st 2006 to May 10th 2007 and was found to have made an extremely high number of silent calls where the people receiving the calls had no method of knowing who had made them, breaching Ofcom rules.

The investigation also found that some of Barclaycard's call centres had no procedures in place to prevent people receiving repeated abandoned calls over a short period of time.

Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards said: "Taken as a whole this is the most serious case of persistent misuse by making silent and abandoned calls that Ofcom has ever investigated.

"Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to reflect this misuse."

Ofcom has previously fined Abbey National, Complete Credit Management, Space Kitchens, Bracken Bay Kitchens, Carphone Warehouse and Toucan for breaches of its rules on silent and abandoned calls.