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Time Warner Cable Owes $229,500 To Woman It Would Not Stop Calling
HughPickens.com writes: Reuters reports that a Manhattan federal judge has ruled Time Warner Cable must pay Araceli King $229,500 for placing 153 automated calls meant for someone else to her cellphone in less than a year, even after she told them to stop. King accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, who once held her cellphone number, even after she made clear who she was in a seven-minute discussion with a company representative. Time Warner Cable countered that it was not liable to King under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law meant to curb robocall and telemarketing abuses, because it believed it was calling Perez, who had consented to the calls. In awarding triple damages of $1,500 per call for willfully violating that law, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said "a responsible business" would have tried harder to find Perez and address the problem. While Time Warner argued that they were unaware King ever asked to be on the company's "do not call list," Hellerstein determined, "there is no doubt King made this revocation." He wrote that the company "could not be bothered" to update King's information, even after she filed suit against TWC in March of 2014. The judge said 74 of the calls had been placed after King sued and that it was "incredible" to believe Time Warner Cable when it said it still did not know she objected. "Companies are using computers to dial phone numbers," says King's lawyer Sergei Lemberg. "They benefit from efficiency, but there is a cost when they make people's lives miserable. This was one such case."
No kidding. $1500 per unsolicited call??? Sign me up! She is really "MAKE $20,000 PER MONTH FROM HOME!!!"
And they will start calling her again.
Why do you hate America?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I know it's wrong and I will go to hell for it, but when I get a spyware plant Microsoft support call I usually try to play dumb for as long as possible to keep the guy tied up (I'm kind of paying it forward to someone down the list who may not get called because I kept the guy going).
Once i get bored with that or they get irritated with me and it's obvious the caller is from South Asia, I start to get insulting. Some guys won't just hang up on you, they try to bully you and that's when I get really cruel and drag out truly offensive insults -- "So I hear you upgraded your residence recently, you moved from a cardboard box to a tin shanty. How's that working out? Are you still eating insects or have you moved to a fresh rat diet? Your wife, has she freshened her dot lately, or is it the same old faded one she's had for a while?"
If I get that far, the guy is usually really wound up and spewing profanity as fast as he can mentally translate it. One guy threatened to kill me and I told him that the CIA would be interested to know that he's probably a terrorist and might want to watch those drone stike videos on YouTube for a preview.
I know, it's awful, the worst kind of Americanism possible, but I figure these people are the scum of the Earth and deserve no quarter.