Slashdot Mirror
"Do Not Call" Violators Fined $1.2M
coondoggie writes "A federal court today spanked two telemarketers with some $1.2 million in civil penalties for violating the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Rule. According to the FTC, the companies called consumers whose phone numbers were on the Do Not Call Registry without having obtained their express written agreement or having an 'established business relationship' with them. One group's telemarketers also allegedly abandoned many calls, by failing to connect the calls to a sales representative within two seconds after consumers answered, as required by law, the FTC stated. The cases were filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC."
From what I can tell, this decision is actually a blow to so-called "fine print" "privacy policies" and "terms and conditions" so prevalent on websites these days. In the article, it says that they were convicted even though their "fine print" said the consumers would receive marketing calls. It sounds like to me that those types of one-sided "fine print" contracts are not being upheld in court.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I have a Virgin Mobile that I've been using now for nearly a year and I still get calls from all sorts of telemarketers who refuse to stop calling me, claiming I owe money or that my car warranty is about to expire. I recently made a report on one of these companies whose robo calls filled up my voice mail, only to recieve a letter back saying the report was 'unfounded' and wishing me a nice day. So while I'm happy to see there has been some action taken here against some of these companies I wish they'd be more consistent in enforcement.
The other thing that bothers me is the increasing frequency of these types of calls coming over VOIP and their increasing similarity to spam. My fear is that unless we get consistent in enforcement we're going to end up with today's situation with email repeated on cellphones, just as it was on faxes and landlines.
--happy one
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They didn't fine the industry $1.2 million. They fined two companies $1.2 million.
Even so, $1.2 million doesn't seem like very much money to fine a large corporation for.
Having $1 billion in revenue instead of $300 billion doesn't suddenly make $1.2 million a big sum.
Oh, I see it makes the fine 0.012% instead of 0.00004%
If the FTC wants to be noticed, they should set a minimum of 1% of revenue for first time/minor offense of calling a few people on the do-not-call-list
The fine should be minimum 20% of annual revenue for a pattern of violations.
And the penalties should be much more severe for repeat violators.
That would actually encourage companies to obey the rules. A $1 million fine is like a fly buzzing around, that companies can ignore and still go about their dastardly business.
There should also be other remedies available, such as prohibiting the CEOs of these companies from holding any company office for five years. That's the kind of penalty which sets an example to make other companies think twice about what they're doing, and I don't think it's disproportionate.
Unless those 1.2m are a sizable portion of the revenue (read: enough to make it unprofitable), it is just a cost factor, not a fine. A fine has to discourage. Unless the fine is actually high enough to make the illegal business unprofitable, it will not stop people doing this kind of business.
Example: You run a scam that cheats people out of 100 bucks each. When you get caught, you have to pay 50 bucks per person scammed as a fine. Question: Do you stop scamming, or is those 50 bucks just the cost factor to take into account for your next run?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They may be "vague sweeping populist statements" to you, but if you had been paying attention here over the years, you would see that just about every report of such cases that has made its way to slashdot has played out pretty much exactly as claimed. Try reading up on Bennett Haselton and his efforts to use the law to punish do-not-call violators.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And you expect the government to know all that? They can't even see red flags when someone claims to trade 1 million stock options on an exchange that at most does 200,000 trades in a day. (numbers approximated)
The US population is roughly 300 million. So, telemarketing revenues are about $1,000 for every person in the US? That doesn't pass the sniff test.
I get them a couple of times a week. They're robo calls, with the usual "press 1 to ..." and they all start with the claim to help you with your CC rates and that this is "your last chance".
Once, I played them. I pressed 1. Said I was interested. Was asked if I had "at least $4000 in CC debt." Once I passed that test, I was handled off to the closer, a really slick asshole who asked for my CC#'s. I stalled. He waited. I acted dumb and said I'd look for my statements. I just set down the phone. 10 minutes later I hung up. I immediately got a call back. At first, he thought I accidentally hung up, but I hung up again. He called back again and before I hung up again I hear "you'll be sorry..." The next 5 rings were people that asked to be taken off their list. I had to take the phone off the hook for 30 minutes.
When a person violates motor vehicle laws badly enough, they lose their license to use a motor vehicle for some duration.
When a lawyer violates the Bar rules badly enough, they lose their license to practice law in that state for some duration (or forever, if you do the types of things Jack Thompson did.)
When a company violates telemarketing laws badly enough, they should lose the ability to telemarket for some duration. Prevent them from calling any customers (without the customer's explicit request -- if someone leaves your company voicemail asking you to contact them, that's okay) for a week for the first offense, doubling with each subsequent offense. Make it so that the punishment sticks even if they try to do some sort of corporate shell game ("No we're not HyperGlobalMegaCompuTech, we're GlobalCompuHyperMegaTech. See our freshly painted sign?") Eventually they'll learn (or be barred from calling customers for long enough that they'll go out of business before regaining the ability to telemarket.)
They should be automatically tax audited and that used to determine the amount, and charge them extra for the untimely audit. Plus that will add to their pain, if we break the rules, we get audited.
Remember, companies have all the rights as people in the US.*
* except when it could inconvenience the company.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Companies ALSO have RESPONSIBILITIES that people do not have. Trucking companies are responsible for $1million liability (usually through insurance policies), far in excess of any liability the average citizen is required to carry. Companies working with petro- and/or hazardous chemicals have responsibilities the average citizen doesn't imagine - UNTIL an accident happens. Nuclear plants have TREMENDOUS responsibility. And, no, companies do NOT enjoy all the same rights as individuals. They don't have the right to vote, for instance. Instead, they just buy proxy votes by giving away free jets to politicians.
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