Home2sense Limited – €234,000 Fine (United Kingdom, 2022)

Home2sense is a company providing insulation services for houses. The ICO while analysing trends of complaints made by the public observed that there was an increase in unsolicited calls regarding loft insulation. The complaints mentioned that callers had used names like Cozy Loft, Warmer Homes and Comfier Homes to make those calls. Accordingly, the ICO sought more information about the callers, which were eventually traced to Home2sense. Investigation revealed that Home2sense had made a total of 798,489 calls, of which 675,478 were to numbers that had been registered with the TPS register (Telephone Preference Service Ltd) for not less than 28 days. During the investigation, Home2sense submitted to the ICO that it is “... a company who call homeowners in regards to previous work that has been done to carry out complimentary checks for homeowners leaving them on information with energy saving solutions". Home2sense claimed that the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR) is not applicable as Home2sense did not transmit any electronic marketing messages. Home2sense claimed that checks on an excel spreadsheet were made against the TPS register on a bi-weekly basis, and that unsolicited calls were low in numbers for call centre, they were made erroneously by staff and that it was not possible to reduce the number of erroneous calls to zero. However, Home2sense did not fully cooperate with the investigation and provided only a partial response to the rest of the queries made and documentation sought by the ICO. The ICO concluded that between 23 June 2020 and 31 March 2021, 675,478 unsolicited direct marketing calls were made to subscribers who were registered with the TPS and who had not notified Home2sense that they were willing to receive such calls. As a result, 29 complaints were made to the TPS, and 33 separate complaints were made to the ICO. The ICO observed that Home2sense “has failed to substantively engage with the Commissioner's investigation”, while admitting that it had obtained customer data “from an unknown source”. The refusal to provide information was considered an attempt to obstruct the investigation. The ICO further expressed concern regarding Home2sense’s act of deflecting responsibility upon its staff, while not providing any evidence of TPS checks being carried out. The ICO noted that the responsibility for compliance with the PECR rests on the organisation itself, and “organisation should have implemented robust procedures to ensure that data which it purchased was either screened against the TPS before it was given to call agents, or that it had obtained valid notification under” Regulation 21(4) PECR. The ICO considered the contravention to be serious due to multiple breaches and lack of Home2sense’s engagement with the investigation. The actions of Home2sense were also considered to be negligent and that it failed to take reasonable steps to prevent contraventions. The ICO noted the following aggravating factors: 1. Home2sense called and asked to speak to people who had passed away. 2. Home2sense’s knowledge that it was likely that their unsolicited calls were in contravention of PECR and were being made for commercial gains. 3. Lack of cooperation with the ICO’s investigation. 4. Continuation of unsolicited calls after launching of investigation by the ICO. Thus, the ICO issued a monetary penalty of €240,317.08 (GBP 200,000) against Home2sense.