Credit card giant Barclaycard has been accused of making nuisance phone calls to its customers, and has been fined as a result of this. Ofcom, the communication regulator, fined Barclaycard £50,000 recently, after finding that the lender was making silent phone calls to its customers. The regulator said that Barclays was guilty of the most ‘persistent misuse’ of a communications network that it had ever known, although Ofcom officials did acknowledge that there was no malicious intent involved.

The reason that the silent calls were made was because Barclaycard generated more calls that its agents could actually handle through the use of an automated system. The spill over of calls that could not be handled still range out to customers but all that the customer received was what appeared to be a silent call. Understandably, this irritated and possibly even concerned some consumers.

An investigation into the matter was carried out by Ofcom between October 2006 and May 2007, and earlier this year it finally ruled that Barclaycard was in breach of its rules. Although the lender was given the opportunity to put forward a defence this was apparently rejected according to reports.

A senior official from Ofcom said: ‘Taken as a whole, this is the most serious case of persistent misuse by making silent and abandoned calls that Ofcom has ever investigated. Had we not been limited by the statutory maximum, we would have imposed a larger financial penalty to reflect this misuse.’

It was not specified as to whether the calls being made were for debt collection or for marketing purposes, but officials believe that they were for the purposes of debt collection.