Walnut Unlimited is commissioned to conduct thousands of telephone surveys every year by a wide range of clients who are looking to gather opinions of the population at large or their own customers in particular. Our interviewers are trained to be professional at all times and are given a large range of information to help them deal with any questions that may arise during the course of our surveys and the telephone calls we make. However, questions may arise after the call has ended, or you may want to comment or make a complaint.
Information and explanations are given below for some of the most common questions asked of us. If you need to contact anyone at Walnut Unlimited as a result of a call we have made, please email calledbyus@walnutunlimited.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
We called you recently and you have a complaint or query
When we make calls we always present a Caller Line Identification (CLI) number – we use a range of numbers (see below). If you are receiving calls from other numbers, these will be originating from companies that we have no connection with.
The range of telephone numbers we will call from are (+44203 769 3744, +44203 807 7880, +44203 769 3822, +441234 416 012, +44123 441 6039, +44123 441 6045, +44123 441 6054, +44123 441 6048. +44123 441 6050, +44123 441 6042, +44123 441 6056, +44123 441 6040, +44123 441 6047, +44182 358 5308).
If you do not want us to call you again please email calledbyus@walnutunlimited.com giving details of your number and ideally the date/time we called. We will add your number to our Do Not Call list to ensure you are not called again by us – this is usually done within 1 working day but may take up to 2 working days. In all cases we will endeavour to respond to you as quickly as possible.
Please be assured we are registered under the Data Protection Act 2018 as a Data Controller and any numbers you supply to us will be stored only so that we do not call these numbers in future. We will never pass your number to anyone else and can also add mobile numbers or landline numbers to our Do Not Call list.
Further to this, Walnut Unlimited never associate your personal data with the answers you supply to questionnaires without first obtaining your informed consent. This means that we will tell you at the beginning of a survey exactly what we plan to do with the information we collect and give you the option to opt out.Walnut Unlimited will only store your data for the period of time required for the project.
Will Walnut Unlimited share my information with anyone else?
We will keep your information confidential except where disclosure is required or permitted by law (for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies). No data collected by Walnut Unlimited is stored outside the UK.
Where did you get my telephone number from?
There are 2 main ways in which we may have obtained your telephone number:
- We are often commissioned by companies to conduct surveys on their behalf with their customers. This ensures an independent, unbiased approach to collecting opinions and helps companies get an accurate picture of their customers’ views. In such cases we would have been passed customer details by the company commissioning the research
- Some clients want their surveys to be nationally or regionally representative of the population. In such cases we will have randomly generated your phone number through a widely used Market Research method called Random Digit Dialling. This means we take a “seed” number, that isn’t called, and then change the last digit to create new numbers. For example, 020 7428 7870 would be changed to 020 7428 7871, 7872, 7873, etc. Because these numbers are generated randomly we hold no personal information related to them. Indeed, until we call these numbers we do not know if they exist as live telephone numbers.
Why do you call me when I am registered with the Telephone Preference Service/TPS?
Walnut Unlimited does not sell or market any products – the purpose of our calls is always for research, the answers to which are completely confidential and only ever passed on to clients in an aggregate form. As a market research company conducting surveys, Walnut Unlimited is exempt from TPS guidelines as TPS was set up to allow registration by those who do not wish to receive sales and marketing calls. This is stated in the letter TPS send out to all those who register with them: “Your TPS registration will not stop calls from companies involved in market research…”
The TPS website also states the following in its FAQ section:
“Telephone Preference Service (TPS) aims to reduce live direct marketing calls and is unable to stop calls from organisations who are conducting research. Genuine research calls are not deemed as direct marketing as they generally relate to information gathering or seeking of opinions whereas the purpose of a direct marketing call would be to sell or market a product or service.
If you want to stop these calls you will need to contact the companies that make them directly or inform the caller that the call and any future calls from them is not welcomed.”
If you want to register with TPS to prevent sales or marketing calls please follow this link: http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/. TPS is a free service.
Why did you call me in the first place?
Walnut Unlimited is commissioned to conduct research by a very wide range of organisations, including amongst others: political parties, charities, newspapers, local authorities, government departments and a wide range of businesses.
All these organisations share the same need of finding out what people think so that they can better move their organisations forward – this is the ultimate reason for them to commission research and the reason we will have called you.
Company Information
Company Registration No: 1317137
Data Controller Registration No: Z6247559
Quality certification: ISO 20252 (certificate number GB10/81767).
Information Security certification: ISO 27001 (certificate number GB13/90735).
