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Suing the Phone Company
TTop writes: "A Washington insurance agent has sued Verizon for harassment after receiving repeated annoying telemarketing calls from Verizon. These particular telemarketers would leave misleading messages on his voice mail like "It is very important that you contact our business office about your account", and continued to call despite his request to be put on a "do not call" list. He even had an temporary anti-harrasment order served on Verizon's regional president. While he ended up losing the case, other state's laws might be more permissive of this approach to protecting privacy."
It's interesting how you can sue a normal business for bad workmanship, overcharging, etc. and the courts will go along with it. But all of a sudden you do it to major company and the courts are coming down on the side of the major company. At least where I live if my phone company cheeses me off I can switch to another one. And at last count I have at least five to switch too (although three of them are pretty iffy choices). Now I have the problem of monopolized electrical service but that's another story.
The big question though is why you can't sue these companies the same way you can any other company? What makes them so special beyond amounts of money? It's like another poster mentioned, if I was calling someone all the time and leaving messages and wouldn't stop I'd be in jail. But all of a sudden a major company does it and it's alright. I feel the same way about the federal budget. If I ran my personal finances that way I'd be in jail. These institions should be held to the same accountability standards as the rest of us.