Jacksons fined £65,000 for unlawfully changing customer marketing preferences (2025-09-25)

Summary

This is a public enforcement notice from the Guernsey Office of the Data Protection Authority (ODPA) announcing that it has fined Jacksons Group Limited and Jacksons (CI) Limited (trading as Van Mossel Jacksons and Van Mossel Motormall) £65,000 for unlawfully altering customer marketing preferences. It is an informational account of a completed enforcement action, not a rule of general application, but it signals the Authority's approach to breaches of consent and record accuracy requirements under the Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2017.

• What happened: Following intelligence received in January 2023, an ODPA inquiry found that Jacksons sales staff, on the directive of a senior employee, changed 430 customer records' marketing preference from 'No' to 'Yes' over roughly one year, mainly affecting Motormall operations.
• Breaches found: The Authority determined Jacksons breached the Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency principle and the Accuracy principle under section 6 of the Law.
• Sanction: A £65,000 administrative fine was imposed, together with an enforcement order requiring Jacksons to take specified steps to bring its practices into compliance with the Law.
• Aggravating factor: The Authority treated the contravention as serious because the reversal of customers' consent choices was intentional.

The notice is framed as a lessons-learned communication for other organisations, stressing that accurate maintenance of marketing consent records, staff training and internal controls are core obligations under the Law, though it does not create new binding rules beyond the existing statutory principles.

Key obligations

• Jacksons must comply with the enforcement order requiring it to take specified steps to bring its marketing preference record-keeping and practices into compliance with the Law.
• Organisations must maintain accurate and reliable records of customer marketing/contact preferences that reflect customers' actual wishes (reiterated statutory obligation under the Law's Accuracy and Lawfulness, Fairness and Transparency principles).

Applies to

data controllers, organisations conducting direct marketing, Channel Islands car dealerships (Jacksons Group Limited and Jacksons (CI) Limited)