Clarity Leeds from Essex has had two complaints about its text messages upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

10 SMS text messages from Clarity Leeds and their affiliates for debt solutions and pensions. A recipient challenged whether the text messages breached the CAP Code, because they were sent unsolicited and he had been assured by Clarity Leeds that his details had been suppressed.

Clarity Leeds said they did not recognise the majority of the reply path numbers in the text messages the complainant received and did not believe that they came from them, but they acknowledged that they had sent texts to the complainant. They gave an assurance that the complainant’s mobile number had been removed from their database and was on their suppression file and that they would not pass the number on to any third parties.

The ASA noted most of the text messages appeared not to have originated from Clarity Leeds, but nonetheless understood that they had sent SMS texts to the complainant. The ad watchdog acknowledged Clarity Leeds assurance that they had removed the complainant’s telephone number from their DNS System database to ensure they received no further marketing texts.

However, the ASA was concerned that both the complainant and the ASA had previously been assured that his details had been removed from their systems, but he had nonetheless received further unsolicited marketing text messages from them. Because the text messages were unsolicited and because the complainant continued to receive marketing communications from Clarity Leeds despite requesting their personal information to be suppressed, the ASA concluded the texts breached the CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 10.4, 10.4.4 and 10.5 (Database practice).

The ASA told Clarity Leeds Ltd to ensure that text messages were not sent to consumers who requested their personal information to be suppressed and to ensure appropriate consent had been given before sending marketing communications by text message.