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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."
They did make her life miserable up to the point she gets that money, if she ever does.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
No kidding. $1500 per unsolicited call??? Sign me up! She is really "MAKE $20,000 PER MONTH FROM HOME!!!"
Sign me up too, I would like to get the A-holes who call me when I'm asleep using my own number showing me as the caller.
She got 229,500 USD, so they didn't really make her life miserable.
The thief had to give the stuff he stole back so he never really stole it?
It's not like they gave her 1,500 USD every time they called. If that had been the case they would have stopped earlier. The intention was to make her life miserable and not compensate for that.
The exec's didn't do it, the corporation did, and we can't send corporations to jail, cause if we did that they'd want other rights too... like free speech (in the form of money) and religious freedom (in the form of not spending money).
Corporations are people 2.0, they have many of the benefits of being people, and fewer detriments of being people.
In the end the customer always pays.
The theory is that if they screw up enough and they keep increasing costs that customers will go elsewhere. That's all nice on paper but some industries have little or no competition so the customers never really leave .. or not enough of them. Corporate/Government behavior is not likely to change unless individuals are held responsible.
In the end the customer/taxpayer always pays.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
And they will start calling her again.
This assumes customers will always pay whatever is asked for them. If TW could charge more, they already would.
Also, a tax deduction doesn't mean it's free for them. All it means they get to substract $229,500 from their taxable income. They still have to pay $229,500 out of their pocket.
They will just pass this cost and its legal costs onto the consumer.
Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be. Every business technically passes all their costs to their customers as the customers are how they make money. When you pay your TW bill (if you have TW) then part of that bill is covering legal expenses when they screw up. Same as when you buy a can of pop at Walmart, Kroger, etc.
And then take both as an expense tax deduction.
It surprised me to find that they can deduct this. The IRS code doesn't allow deduction of penalties paid to governmental agencies, but apparently civil non-governmental judgements are deductable.
Do you have ESP?
They will lose a few customers who quit when their bill goes up/see a cheaper plan advertised and lose a lot more customers who never switch to them because they are now more expensive than the competition.
This WILL affect their bottom line. That is how capitalism works and in their industry their is a lot of competition.
In reality this fine is not large enough to matter to the company, but the blow to their reputation is worse. It makes them look stupid and their competition can take advantage of that.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For the company itself, sure. For that particular department, it's probably a serious amount of cash, and is likely to get whoever gets blamed for it in trouble.
They got a summons in march ... so at least legal was involved as well, knee jerk reaction of "customer is always wrong" won this woman the lottery.
It wasn't a one off event. It sounds like irresponsibility throughout the organization, from training on up.
I know you corporate butt lickers will never agree, but the fine was justified. Possibly not enough.
Of course they will. It's either that or they own a money printing press, right? I see this all the time: "they'll just pass the cost on to consumers". I'm at a loss to determine what you think the alternative would be.
Reduced profits. The theory is that in a competitive market, a company's ability to pass that kind of cost to their customers is limited by competition.
Haha.
I seriously doubt this would be considered a tax deductible expenditure. U.S. Code 162 - Trade or business expenses penalties or fines paid to any government agency or instrumentality because of a violation of any law are not deductible.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
We all hate personal injury lawyers and their shady advertisement. But when corporations behave like this, they are the only leverage an ordinary consumer has.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I get those "Microsoft" support calls a couple times a month... I usually cuss them out and hang up the phone, like I imagine most computer-literate people do. (That job has gotta have a high turnover rate...)
Well, a few months ago, one called me, identified himself as being from "SpeedyPC" (points for not pretending to work for Microsoft, I guess...), and I did my usual string of expletives and slammed down the phone. The *bleep!*-er called back! I let it go to machine. He does it again. I let it go to machine. He does it a third time, and I pick up because I need the line open for business purposes. He begins to scold me for being rude to him! WTH? He knows he's a scammer, I know it, he knows I know it, so why on earth is he wasting his time letting me know how mean I was to him? He tries to argue with me about how he's going to "prove" my machine is infected or something...
Don't these people have call stats to meet like any other telemarketer? Why did he take time to call me back? How was that ever going to work?
Many fines are not deductible expenses
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
No kidding. $1500 per unsolicited call??? Sign me up! She is really "MAKE $20,000 PER MONTH FROM HOME!!!"
Sure. Find them, track down their info, hire a lawyer, invest months of your life. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm just saying it's usually a lot of work for a smallish payoff. It's very unusual that one company with a traceable location and actual ability to pay makes 100+ calls to the same person.
For Time Warner it is a purposeful, long standing choice and not a knee jerk reaction. You don't get something this pervasive and long lasting without an overall corporate culture that promotes it. There is a reason their frequent billing mistakes are always in their favor: they aren't mistakes at all.
Fight fire with fire. Let Lenny talk to them and amuse us at the same time.
https://youtu.be/m674Hq7-tyQ
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Why do you hate America?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
The exec's didn't do it, the corporation did, and we can't send corporations to jail, cause if we did that they'd want other rights too
I know this is sarcasm, but I don't understand how this stuff gets modded up as "insightful."
Being an employee or member of a corporation in no way absolves an individual of CRIMINAL responsibility. Many corporate employees and executives have gone to jail over the years when they have committed criminal acts in the name of a corporation. In fact, being part of a corporation often opens up people to "conspiracy" charges, even if they aren't individually culpable, so being a corporate executive actually can open more avenues to prosecution.
Of course the reality is that executives are less likely to be convicted of serious crimes -- but that's because they're often rich and can afford better lawyers, not because they are legally less responsible for criminal action.
In any case, this was NOT a criminal action, so your misleading statement is completely irrelevant. This was a civil lawsuit, and this woman probably received significantly more in monetary damages than she would have if an individual had harassed her... so once again, it seems the corporation actually opens up a greater avenue for legal culpability than for an individual.
As poster above stated, there are a few alternatives:
1. Customer pays
2. Shareholders pay (in the form of less profit)
3. Employees pay in the form of not getting a raise or no increase in compensation
4. The company spends less money on other things to make up the cost
You generally don't change the customer cost too frequently - TWC most likely would not increase costs because they lost a single court case - with a market cap of 50 billion dollars 230k isn't really that much as a one off cost.
In all likelihood this particular cost would be eaten by shareholders in the form of less profit. You can't jerk employees around too much at the lower levels, and executives at the higher levels will probably just be allowed to keep playing. It isn't a significant enough amount of money to really worry about spending less elsewhere as the administrative cost to flip budgets around for such a small amount of money is probably not worth it.
In reality though, I would be rather surprised if an organization as big as TWC didn't have a budget line item at the beginning of the year for things like legal fees, penalties, court costs, etc etc. So in all likelihood, they had already planned to spend some amount of money, and this may or may not have had a big impact on that, and it may or may not cause them to go over budget on legal expenses.
If, over time, the trend of higher legal expenses continues, and overall expenses continue to increase, that would obviously factor into consumer prices. But I wouldn't expect cable/internet prices to rise because of one loss in court.
Agreed. This wasn't one unwanted call resulting in a $229,500 judgment. It was a series of calls with the woman telling them to stop calling and that the person they were trying to reach wasn't at that number. They even kept calling after the lawsuit was filed. In short, Time Warner Cable has some seriously mucked up telemarketing practices and didn't care enough to clean them up. Maybe this judgement will jump start some discussions in the company to fix this.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If they could get away with just raising consumer prices to cover this cost, they should have done it regardless of whether this lawsuit ever existed. By saying "They will just pass the cost onto consumers" you are also saying, TWC will not raise consumer costs unless they are forced to by their own costs (e.g. legal) going up. I don't think this is true. I think they are charging whatever the market will bear at any given time, and given that they have no competition, their lawsuits have no effect on the market.
This reminds me of an internet argument i had with a major dumbass.
Here in Argentina, VAT is 21%, CC swipe fees 3% and there are a few other taxes.
This guy was offended that "he" had to pay VAT, "he" had to pay the swipe fee, and "he" had to pay for operational cost of business. I just don't understand what he wanted. Apparently, in his silly world, a business should have only a markup of 30%, and ALL business expenses should come off that 30%. I shouldn't be passing on VAT to him, and I should absorb all costs "and if it's not profitable, I should close my business".
Some people just don't understand how things work.
I'm not a big fan of punitive damages payable to the victim. (In my country there's no such thing; there are fines payable to the state, and actual damages payable to the victim, with very small amounts being paid for unquantifiable stuff like "mental anguish"). I'm also not a big fan of people landing a huge payday because of a small "jackpot" mishap or being slighted in some small way by a large, rich company.
However, I am in favour of strict anti spam laws and rules against robocalls. $1500 per unlawful unsolicited call does not sound excessive to me, either as a fine paid by the company or as a sum received by the victim. I wish we had a similar law. But yes... if you are going to call someone 150 times, even after the person points out that you have the wrong person, then you are going to pay the fine 150x. Simple math.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
They aren't mistakes AND they're so small, most people don't bother. Bill an extra "wrong" $5 every month to 10 million customers, though, and what do you get? A few thousand people calling about that charge, and getting it as credit in their next bill, and the rest of the millions just paying it without noticing.
I moved my long-time landline to my cell several years ago, and I could not get robocallers to leave me alone, even after several years on the do not call registry and regular complaints. It was particularly annoying when parts of their ads ended up as voicemail messages.
I finally added the tones for a disconnected/no longer in service number to the beginning of my voicemail message, and the calls are drastically reduced, and I haven't had such an intrusive voicemail yet this year.
I once told a Toronto Star phone salesman that I didn't need a subscription, as I was illiterate. He then argued with me that I couldn't be.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Corporations like Time Warner truly believe they are above the law. They will not pay this woman. Ever. In fact, my bet is that they will SPEND $500,000 or more, to avoid paying $299,000 -- and here's why -- Time Warner's lawyers will advise the company to appeal, appeal, appeal, because if they pay, it will open the door to more lawsuits.
Instead, if they take a hard stance, and essentially, run the plaintiff into the poorhouse on legal fees, they will come out the winner in a war of attrition.
And then also, they will lobby for more Tort reform in Washington DC, so that consumers/citizens *never* have legal recourse against abuses by the ruling class.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Settlements and court awards are generally not taxable as income.
I certainly didn't have to pay taxes on any insurance settlement I got into from accidents. I didn't have to pay taxes on the check EA cut me when I sued their ass.
Each time, I asked the lawyer "Do I need to claim this on taxes?"
"No." was the answer I got in return.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
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.
I've always felt that, as punishment, large corporations should be obligated to add a 5 second spot to their advertisement saying something embarrassing about themselves, such as "we're time warner, and we cheat our customers"
Well, it appears he was right.
I can see the fnords!