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Action on spam and telemarketing: January to March 2020

Key actions

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We received $168,000 in infringement notices for breaches of telemarketing rules (including $159,600 from Wyndham Destinations)

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We issued 2 formal warnings for breaches of telemarketing rules

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We completed 3 investigations and sent 884 compliance alerts to businesses

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We made new rules to prevent mobile number fraud, and established the Scams Telecommunications Action Taskforce

Our priorities

Illegal solar telemarketing and lead generation are our focus areas for this year.

We are currently investigating a number of these businesses and these industries are on notice that they must comply.

Positively, we are starting to see a decrease in consumer complaints, particularly about solar telemarketing.

View all our current compliance priorities.

Combating scams

We are continuing to implement our Combating scams action plan. Actions this quarter included:

  • the first meeting of the Scam Telecommunications Action Taskforce on 13 February 2020, which included government, law enforcement and industry representatives
  • Communications Alliance releasing a draft Reducing Scam Calls industry code for public comment on 25 March 2020. The code was developed in response to the enforceable obligations proposed in the action plan

On 28 February 2020, we made new rules to prevent mobile number fraud. The rules came into force on 30 April 2020.

We issued regular scam alerts through social media, including Facebook and Twitter.

Investigations and enforcement

View our investigations into spam and telemarketing.

We finished 3 investigations this quarter and have 5 investigations in progress. We take 4 months on average to complete an investigation.

Find out more about our role in compliance and enforcement and the penalties for breaking the rules.

Finished investigations

Finished investigations into spam and telemarketing, results can be found in data file below

Compliance alerts

We generally alert businesses about compliance issues raised in complaints. If the issues continue, we may investigate. One alert can include several issues.

Compliance alerts for spam and telemarketing, results can be found in the data file

Complaints

Consumer complaints directly inform our actions and help us identify issues and trends.

  • 35.9% of telemarketing and 14.8% of spam complaints were about scams
  • the most common complaints were about financial services, solar telemarketing and retail marketing
  • 36.8% of complaints about telemarketing did not contain enough details to identify the caller

Complaints for spam and telemarketing, results can be found in the data file

More information

Find out more about spam and telemarketing rules and what actions you can take.

Subscribe to our newsletters to get updates about our actions on telemarketing, spam and scams.

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