Fury over 'silent' sales calls

THE telecom watchdog has criticised a firm selling kitchens over the phone for making more than a million intrusive silent calls.

Ofcom said MKD Holdings, which runs Kitchens Direct, had made 26m calls from its call centres from November last year to February.

In about 1.5m cases, when the calls were answered there was no operator at the end of the line. At one point about a quarter of the calls being made were 'silent'.

Ofcom said it had now received undertakings from MKD and from IMS, a smaller company offering a similar service, that the problem would be tackled. Otherwise Ofcom could fine them and force them to offer compensation to people they had called.

The calls were generated by automatic calling systems. In theory, a call centre operator was supposed to come to the line as soon as the call was answered, but poor management meant no one was available and the calls were then automatically terminated.

'These calls can be absolutely infuriating and very frightening for some people,' said an Ofcom spokesman.