Call Handler Receives £100,000 for Hearing Disorders

A call handler has won over £100,000 in compensation after she developed severe hearing problems and was forced to give up her job.

Beverly Thompson, 48, worked from home as a call handler for the AA. The company gave her a new headset in late 2005 and it was shortly after this that she began to experience hearing problems.

She reported the fact that the volume on her headset was too loud and she had no means of reducing it. Her employer told her that there was a solution in place. No replacement was ever provided, however. A few months later, she noticed that she could hear what she thought was a hissing noise on the telephone line, but her husband couldn’t hear it and suggested that maybe her hearing was damaged. She also began to suffer with pain in her ears.

After visiting her doctor, Mrs Thompson was diagnosed with a range of hearing disorders. In addition to the pain, she found she was suffering from severe tinnitus and hearing loss.

Her doctor advised that continued use of the headset could further damage her hearing and so Mrs Thompson was obliged to give up her job in order to prevent this happening.

After bringing a claim against her former employer, Mrs Thompson received an out-of-court settlement of £105,000. The AA did not, however, admit liability for her injuries. It described her case as one involving a unique set of circumstances and stated that its equipment conforms to the relevant standards and is routinely checked.

Although it is easy to diagnose, noise induced hearing loss is an irreversible injury and it is normally not noticed by the injured person until it is too late.

Call handlers are sometimes exposed to ‘acoustic shock’, a term used in connection with incidents involving exposure to short duration, high frequency, high intensity sounds through a telephone headset, and some have claimed to have experienced a range of symptoms as a result. However, no direct link has, as yet, been found between the two.

The Health and Safety Executive has useful guidance entitled 'Protect Your Hearing or Lose it'.