A Bradford-based bank is among the latest firms to be fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for sending illegal marketing texts and emails.

Vanquis Bank Limited, headquartered in Godwin Street, in Bradford city centre, started a campaign to send 870,849 spam text messages and 620,000 spam emails to promote its credit cards.

Both the emails and texts broke the law because the recipients had not consented to being sent such messages.

Vanquis Bank has now been fined £75,000 by the ICO.

The report by the ICO says that between April 2015 and February 2016 the office received 131 complaints about the nuisance texts.
It adds: “The commissioner is satisfied that the contravention was serious. The sending of unsolicited marketing texts/emails is a matter of significant public concern.”
A spokesman for Provident said: “Vanquis Bank is sorry for any irritation this has caused to the individuals concerned. 
“Although the ICO found that Vanquis Bank did not deliberately contravene the regulation, Vanquis Bank takes this contravention extremely seriously. 
“The Bank has reviewed its marketing processes and put in place steps to ensure that contraventions of this nature do not occur again, including no longer working with the third parties concerned.”
In July Provident Financial was fined £80,000 by the ICO in relation to the texts, sent on its behalf to promote its Satsuma Loans. The company was found to have employed third party affiliate companies to send 999,057 unsolicited text messages which was against the law as the recipients had not consented to receive such messages.

In a separate case, London company Xerpla has been fined £50,000 by the ICO. The firm sent nearly 1.26 million spam emails promoting products and services as far ranging as dog food, wine, competitions and boilers on behalf of other firms. Xerpla did not have the right consent needed from people to send the emails.

ICO Head of Enforcement Steve Eckersley said: “There are rules in place to protect people from the irritation, and in some cases anxiety and distress, spam texts and emails cause.

“People need to be properly informed about what they are consenting to. Telling them their details could be passed to ‘similar organisations’ or ‘selected third parties’ cannot be relied upon as specific consent.”

He added: “People were so exasperated by these messages that they complained to us. That sparked two ICO investigations and enabled us to take action and hold the firms behind this nuisance to account.

“These firms should have taken responsibility for ensuring they had obtained clear and specific consent for the sending of the messages. They didn’t and that is unacceptable.”

“I would encourage anyone troubled by a spam email or text to report it via the ICO’s website.”

Vanquis Bank Vanquis Bank obtained the marketing lists used to send the messages from other organisations.

It relied on indirect consent rather than checking itself that the correct level of consent had been obtained.

The consent included non-specific, general wording, such as ‘trusted parties’ and ‘carefully selected third parties’.

The fine issued by the ICO to Vanquis Bank follows another earlier this year to related firm Provident Personal Credit Limited for spam texts.

The ICO has also issued a legal notice ordering Vanquis Bank to ensure its practices comply with the law.