⚠️ "Easylife Limited, registered at 94 Orchard Gate, Greenford, England, UB6 0QP, is a company selling household products through catalogues. The brand was founded in 1992, and Easylife was incorporated on 3 September 2004 (at that date "Easylife Group Limited"). Easylife has one active director registered at Companies House, Gregory Grant Caplan, who is the Chief Executive Officer and also a director of "Easylife Holdings Limited", which is registered as a person of significant control of Easylife." Source: ICO enforcement notices.
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Listen to us describing this outrageous case on your favorite podcast platform, or here.
Easylife's statement:
"Easylife has simply done what the ICO has already admitted to us that lots of businesses do day in day out. Easylife was simply trying to minimise the number of calls it made to its customers, but it seems that the ICO and its new Commissioner, John Edwards, would prefer it if businesses like Easylife made more untargeted calls to their customers and not fewer more targeted calls … Easylife fundamentally disagrees with the ICO both that it has broken the law and also in relation to the level of fine imposed, which is out of all proportion to the alleged wrong."
However they also said to the ICO that:
... it did not want to be competitively disadvantaged compared to others in its sector.
💬 What's your take on this case? Are monetary penalties enough?
👉 Join the discussion on LinkedIn, where this decision was shared 7 October.
Links and resources:
- ICO press release Catalogue retailer Easylife fined £1.48 million for breaking data protection and electronic marketing laws
- ICO enforcement notices for Easylife Limited, including Easylife Limited enforcement notice and Easylife Limited monetary penalty notices
- News articles (worth a read!) from the Mirror and Which? (where Easylife's statement is from)
