I'm no fan of cold sales calls, and even less so when I hear of it happening in the world of injury claims.

I have already mentioned the problem of texts in another blog, but the problem goes one step further when an actual telephone call is made to a targeted client. It is even more intrusive and pushy. A phone call should only be made if a potential claimant has actively indicated a wish to pursue a claim, and has asked for someone to call them to discuss this and to advise them. Cold calling is the act of telephoning people at random, without them having requested to be contacted, and seeking their business. It is not lawful to do this in personal injury claims work.

Whilst on holiday last week, I received one of these phone calls. I was staying in a rented apartment, and the call came through on the landline. The apartment is not used as a private dwelling at ay time of year, it is solely for holiday lets, so this landline number would not be on record as "belonging" to any individual person. On answering the call, there was an automated message referring to a recent accident and that an adviser was on hand to talk to me  and secure several thousands of pounds in compensation for me. All I had to do was to press 5 on the keypad now. How could I turn down the opportunity to find out more?

The call was then connected through to a "real" person, who launched into a sales pitch saying how sorry she was to hear that I had been in an accident, and was keen to get things moving for me. Very helpfully, and unusually, she was kind enough to tell me which company she was working for as well. I'll not mention them here, though!

I then broke the news to her that  I had not been in an accident, and asked her to explain why I had a cold sales call. I was told I would only have been called if I had opted into receiving this sort of marketing. I explained that the number that they had called did not belong to anyone, certainly not to me, so it was impossible that anyone would have given her company any permission to use the number for marketing. Her defence to that was that it must just be that the number had been misdialled.

This holds no water. The call was made on the basis that as soon as the phone was answered, an automated message kicked in. That must mean that the whole calling system is automated, and will be contacting a list of predetermined numbers. Huge volumes of calls are made, indiscriminately phoning sequential numbers. If the call isn't answered, or if the receiver hangs up, it just clicks over to make the next outbound call on the list. The computer does not misdial.

So, I asked to speak to a manager so that they could show how they came to select that phone number for that sales call, or to show that it was simply a misdial. They would have records of their marketing activity, so this would not be a difficult complaint to deal with, if they had nothing to hide. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), who regulate the activity of this company, require that they operate a formal complaints procedure. I think they must have temporarily forgotten that, as they hung up on me........I'm only surprised that it took them so long to hang up! It must have suddenly dawned on the call handler that too many questions were being asked, and that I was a bad person for them to have called!

I've sent details of the company to the Claims Regulation Unit at the MoJ. They have the power to follow this through, and to investigate the company and act on any unlawful marketing.  So far the MoJ have acknowledged receipt of the report, and I await hearing the outcome. My concern is that this sort of intrusive marketing was banned in injury work for good reason. The public do not welcome being pestered in this way, and it gives this profession a bad reputation. I hope that the MoJ can act on this to weed out this activity.