DirectTV to Pay $5.4M in Privacy Fines

abscissa writes "Remember the do-not-call registry? DirecTV is in big trouble for violating the list, and faces the largest civil assessment ever obtained of $5.4M for harassing people over the phone at home and ignoring the registry. Although it looks like DirecTV was outsourcing all their telemarketing (obviously), the FTC recieved 1.4 million complaints, the biggest category of do-not-call violations ever recieved." From the article: "Majoras was quick to emphasize that the most important part of the settlement is that it sends a warning to companies that they cannot hire telemarketers and then turn their backs on whether or not the rules are followed."

Comments

1.4 million complaints

[OYAHHH]

If,

It takes 1.4 million complaints to get action over the DNC list then I would say the DNC list is somewhat of a failure.

Personally, anything over about 500 complaints is where I would set the limit.

Re:1.4 million complaints

[no reason to be here]

500 is a little low. DirecTV outsourced this to another company, that company could have hundred of people manning the phones. The typical telmarketing call doesn't last that long, so once could easily exceed that 500 mark by lunch time. The point? That could very easily be a simple abberation in how strictly they follow the rules. If management (of either company) pays attention, they should be able to catch the abuse by day's end. Certainly, they would in a week, at which point, you'd have several thousand possible complaints logged.

Qunatity of calls, I think, is the wrong way to look at it. The decision to levy fines for violating the DNC list should be based on a pattern of behavior. A company that consistently violates the list, even if they have a very small call volume, needs to be fined just as much as DirecTV is. For those opperations that are very large (like DirecTV) scale up the fine appropriately.

Yeah, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

How much money did they make off the telemarketing? More than the fine?

Re:So the message is...

[gid13]

Uh... Have you been smoking crack? They obviously cared because they put themselves on the DNC in the first place, which is entirely opt-in. It is not at all like an election, where we don't have a clear indication what someone would do.

If people on the DNC list stop complaining, the logical assumption is not that they don't care, it's that they don't believe the system will work (they particularly might think this since they're still getting unwanted calls) or possibly they don't consider a $4 fine worth their time to report it.

Re:Drop in the Bucket

[misleb]

I don't think it makes sense to compare the fines to how much it costs to handle a complaint. The question is, how much does it cost DirectTV to make the telemarketing calls in the first place? And how much do they stand to make from it? I can see $5.4M seriously damaging their net profit in such a way that it would be been better to have followed the rules. And that is what matters.

-matthew