The Australian Communications and Media Authority has issued DC Marketing Europe Limited with an Infringement Notice, carrying a penalty of $149,600, for extensive breaches of the Spam Act 2003. The penalty is the largest issued by ACMA since the Spam Act’s penalty provisions came into force in April 2004.

ACMA penalised DC Marketing for 102 contraventions relating to missed call marketing activities in July and August 2006.

‘Consumers need to feel confident that when they use their mobile phone they are not going to be deceived into receiving unwanted marketing messages,’ said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman. ‘This penalty should serve as a warning to all service providers that ACMA will act decisively on conduct that breaches the Spam Act.’

Missed call marketing involves the sending of short duration calls to mobile phones, thereby leaving a ‘missed call’ message on the phone.

Under this practice, when the mobile phone owner returned the missed call, they received marketing information from DC Marketing. Consumers had no way of knowing who the missed call was from before calling DC Marketing and so effectively paid to receive DC Marketing’s marketing messages. The missed call marketing messages sent out by DC Marketing were unsolicited, did not identify the sender and did not contain an unsubscribe facility, each of which is a breach of the Spam Act.

‘As a consequence of increased resources provided by the Commonwealth Government in this year’s Federal Budget, ACMA will be significantly increasing its anti-spam activities over the next year and will be closely monitoring the mobile marketing industry’s compliance with the Spam Act,’ Mr Chapman added. With repeat offenders facing potential penalties of up to $1.1 million per day, Mr Chapman warned that ‘non-compliance would prove to be a costly exercise.’

Posted on July 23rd, 2007 by lbraum
Filed under: Australia