No, the FCC is Not Forcing Consumers To Pay $225 To File Complaints (washingtonpost.com)

Having your voice heard at the Federal Communications Commission could soon cost you hundreds of dollars, according to congressional Democrats Tuesday who oppose a looming rule change by the nation's top telecom and cable regulator. But that may not be the case after all, a review of the FCC proposal shows. From a report: At issue is a proposal that the FCC is expected to vote on Thursday that looks at the agency's process for handling "informal" complaints -- the kind you might file if you've received an unwanted robocall or if you've heard something indecent on the radio. Under the proposal, the FCC could soon pass the informal complaints it receives directly to the companies that consumers are complaining about, the lawmakers said in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. That might result in FCC staff no longer reviewing those submissions, they said. And customers who receive no relief from the companies would then be forced to lodge a "formal" complaint at the FCC, an existing procedure that costs $225.

"To advise consumers that they file a $225 formal complaint if not satisfied ignores the core mission of the FCC -- working in the public interest," wrote Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.). The controversy was first reported by the Verge. Staffers for the House Energy and Commerce Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FCC said in a statement that the lawmakers had misunderstood the proposal. "The item would not change the Commission's handling of informal complaints," the agency said.

Comments

Sounds like the truth may be in the middle

[damn_registrars]

From the summary it seems that a regular complaint is still free, but now it will go straight to the company whose offense triggered a consumer to lodge a complaint. If they don't do anything to improve on the situation and the consumer wants to see something happen, the next option is the $225 formal complaint.

In other words it appears that if you want the FCC to do something other than just pass the complaint on and wash their hands of it, you will pay $225. If you're OK with that then you can still complain for free.

Um... did the submitter read what they wrote?

[rsilvergun]

The FCC is reading and working informal complaints now. The proposal is to stop doing that and just pass the complaints on. I can be ignored by my phone company and ISP all by myself, thank you very much. If I'm contacting the FCC it's _because_ I'm being ignored. This let's the FCC ignore the complaints unless you pay $225 bucks. It's practically a poll tax.

Re:Um... did the submitter read what they wrote?

[geekmux]

It costs money to process. So the alternative is that the rest of us pay to process your complaint. I'm sure your complaint is serious, but I'll bet the FCC spends lots of resources (tax dollars) investigating stupid complaints.

So what? That's the cost of doing business. Hell, for a taxpayer-funded organization, it's the justification of their existence.

And besides, what you're implying should be reflected in cost reductions and ultimately budget cuts for the FCC. As a seasoned US taxpayer, I can fucking promise you neither of those will happen, so what exactly was the point of this exercise other than creating revenue streams and ensuring the common man cannot afford to actually use the tools their taxes are (allegedly) paying for?

Re:The real story here...

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny part is how all the "muh Fox" and "muh Breitbart" people that you inoculated your comment against via your disclaimer will never ever ever admit that their left-wing biased sites are just as bad.

Re: The real story here...

[RedK]

If it's unclear what the facts are... don't state things as fact then, which the initial Verge headline did. That's like one of the big problems with current day journalism, it's not based on facts.

Again : stop making this a right vs left thing. It's a bad thing regardless of your side of the political aisle.

So wait a second...

[argStyopa]

...you're suggesting that congresspeople of the opposition party may have "misunderstood" (accidentally or deliberately) and then used that "mistaken" information to gin up outrage?

Hm. Can't imagine that happening in America.

Fed preemption of action against phone spammers

[Ungrounded Lightning]

What bugs me is that the federal law preempts civil suits against the likes of phone spammers, those who ignore the do-not-call list, etc.

My family has our land lines on the do-not-call list and yet is running a higher ratio of junk to real calls than junk to real snail mail, and the robocallers are starting to show up on our cellphones (which is supposedly strictly a no-no).

If we could civil-sue the offenders (say, in small-claims court) for damages in the form of the cost of our time and resources in receiving those calls, we could recover at least some of our losses, while the offenders might think twice about re-offending. But we can't, because the federal government preempted such suits, and then doesn't take effective action against the offenders, so the level of offence, and resulting damage, explodes.

It seems to me that such preemption might constitute a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment (for the alleged "public purpose" of avoiding crippling legitimate businesses with bogus suits from disgruntled customers when they make a legitimate phone contact).

If so, the Fed owes us all a lot of money.

Anyone up for running a class-action to recover that? B-)