The Sound of Silence – Global Personals responses to our complaints

We have been encouraging people to get in contact with Global Personals for a couple of weeks now to complain about their websites which encourage people to have affairs. (If you are new to this please see a summary of the campaign). So far loads of people have contacted the company.  After the first day of calls , the Global Personals changed their phone system to stop extension numbers being dialled and have refused to put anyone through beyond the switchboard who wants to talk about this issue.

Non-response

When people have phoned in they have been given an email address – either info@globalpersonals.co.uk or support@globalpersonals.co.uk  The names of the email addresses are presumably ironic because I don’t think anyone has got either any information or support from emailing them.  Many of us have also written to the CEO Ross Williams many times – both by post and via email.  We have received precisely nothing in return.

If Global Personals had any kind of defence then they would release a statement to explain the situation and put forward their point of view. Their approach is simply ignore all complaints about their websites and to hope that we will just go away. 

If you have emailed them and not heard anything back then please phone them again on 01753 27 12 80 and ask why you have not heard from them and ask when you will recieve a reply. 

What we are doing from here on…

We are currently working out some different angles to take the issues further.  We have a meeting in Maidenhead tomorrow with some local people who share the concerns and we will be talking about what we can do locally.

Also we have plans around making contact with Global Personal’s business partners.  We feel sure that some of them would not want to be too connected to the kind of toxic marriage break-up sites that Global Personals run.

We also would like to continue raising this within political circles.  Many people have contacted their MPs and some have had responses from Ed Vaizy, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Communication and Creative Industries who has asked them to contact the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).   As you may have read about the previous campaign, this is where I started and the ASA rejected my concerns.

If you want to complain to the ASA please write to their Chairman: Rt Hon Lord Smith of Finsbury, Advertising Standards Authority, Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6QT.

You can refer to a previous rejected complaints about the website ‘marital affair’, run by Global Personals, complaint reference A10-116460 and then complain about similar adverts for ‘affairsdating’, a website also run by Global Personals which are situated at 13 Park Parade, corner Harlesden Gardens, Harlesden.  The same advert is also at 136 Powls Street, Greenwich, 120 Villers Avenue, Surbiton and at 1 Station Approach, Hampton.

Many thanks for your support and commitment!