Cut-off customer threatens PlusNet with DPA

Says provider breached own Ts & Cs

One of the subscribers cut off from PlusNet this week has threatened to take the broadband provider to the Data Protection Agency for breaching its own privacy guidelines.

Wade Womersley says PlusNet informed him by phone that it planned to terminate his account, breaching the company’s own terms and conditions.

In a letter to PlusNet, Womersley says the ISP’s own terms and conditions state that any notice to customers must be via “the Contact Us tool or email to the address provided to you as part of the service.”

“I have never provided PlusNet with consent to use my telephone number for any purpose other than providing a broadband connection over the line,” he states.

In his letter, Womersley, demands the company “clarify whether or not you believe that your use of my personal information was in accordance with either the Terms and Conditions of my contract or your Privacy Policy.”

Womersley said that he is prepared to go to the Data Protection Agency, ISPA and Trading Standards on the issue.

A spokesman for PlusNet said the company had called Womersley “out of courtesy”.

The spokesman said this was not a data protection issue, and added, that the phone call had been followed up in writing. “We’ve not breached our own terms and conditions."

PlusNet said it cut off Womersely and another subscriber for mounting what it claimed was an “aggressive” campaign of forum postings and emails dissing the company.

Womersley says the two were simply seeking to push the company into alerting all of its customers to new cheaper tariffs offered by the provider earlier this year. He added that he had only ever sent one email to the company’s support centre on the issue: “I stuck to the forums.”®