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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.
"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.
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
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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.
Most working class people cannot afford to throw $200+ toward a complaint that might help them deal with a big business---if there is a legal basis for intervention, which, of course, they have no way of knowing without consulting a lawyer.
A decent chunk of people couldn't throw $200+ toward a complaint even if it would definitely result in action.
If the FCC is supposed to oversee the telecom industry in the interest of the public, then this is a great way to slough off one of its fundamental responsibilities. Removing consumer protections often provokes outrage, so apparently the new plan is to simply render the protections meaningless or difficult to invoke.
Has anyone started a pool on how much Pai gets paid by Verizon when he's hired after stepping down from the FCC? I want in on that action.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
If you read the article and the rebuttal statements from the FCC, it appears this is the new policy:
You will still be able to file an "informal" complaint, but those are the ones that just get forwarded to the spam folder at the company you're complaining about and ignored entirely by the FCC.
However, if you want to file a formal complaint to the FCC, you will be required to pay $225 at the time you file your complaint, which will then be forwarded to the spam folder at the FCC before being completely ignored.
If you want to form a complaint that won't be ignored by the FCC, you must be a registered lobbyist for the telecom industry, be a member of a Trump Country Club, or god you must be new here, get the fuck out before we call security.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I called Novell once to report a bug in their software... they asked me for a credit card number, as obviously reporting a bug was using software support services that the billed $200/hr for! (For the record, they were clearing interrupt flags on return from interrupt instead of saving and restoring the state of the flags, meaning that interrupts disabled before entering Novell code were mysteriously enabled after. They also told me, "I'm going through the Windows code, and we've already fixed that issue!" Sure... but not in any code that was available for me to use!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Dead on accurate... after the fact. They changed their headline for one. It used to read :
"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
Whereas it now reads :
"Democrats argue a new FCC rule would hinder consumers, but Commission says they got it wrong".
This is a typical tactic, where you post an initial story, with initial "wrong facts" and "sensational" headline. Get a massive ton of shares of social media and get the outrage rolling, and then silently update the story to be less biased/sensational when the initial surge of visits/shares has died down.
Make sure to hide the correction way down. The Verge's story has this paragraph now :
"Update and correction July 11th, 12:30PM ET: The article has been updated to include the FCCâ(TM)s response and to clarify that the informal complaints change was expressed by the congressmen; this article previously described the change as requiring consumers to pay a $225 fee, as stated in the letter."
So yes, The Verge's story was initially bad. It was just later amended to be "Oh wait, lol journalism, our bad". Why did you jump at "you right-wing" people right away and call it conspiracy ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Regulatory (see executive in the vast majority of cases) agencies will always be used politically in this way. The general idea is this:
Contrary to the constant attributions to Hitler and racists, conservatives will always look to shrink the size of government and the associated costs. Regulatory agencies, not established or checked by congress due to their very nature of being birthed by the executive (IRS, FBI, EPA, ICE etc etc) are almost entirely at the mercy of the currently sitting executive. This means that the next executive can simply change the rules. If you want to protect these agencies and their roles in government, talk to your congressmen, talk to your senators and get them enshrined in law. Every executive action should be considered temporary, and you should not settle for executive action if you really want change. They are, and always will be, political shortcuts taken to appease their voters. This isn't ever going to get solved without actual legislation being made to make these "guarantees" everyone seems to think they have.
Everything going on in current events is a perfect example of why executive actions are simply not enough. Trump is showing you the weakness in that system right now. Get laws passed, don't settle for temporary solutions and then complain when you hand a new person full authority over massive chunks of what could be considered rights. This problem was created by the precedent, not the president. The more we accept executive action the less power we have as citizens over the process of governing.
From the very next section of the same article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."[14]
On August 13, 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.[15][16][17][18]
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Pai is making the government more _useful_. It's just a difference of opinion regarding for whom it should be useful. Pai thinks it's the wealthy oligarchs who pay him and you seem to be of the opinion that it's the people who elected his boss (Donald Trump). See, just a difference of opinion really...
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Where did the Verge come into play? I thought this was from the Washington Post?
see figure one, Holmes!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Here's the old / existing version:
 1.717 Procedure.
The Commission will forward informal complaints to the appropriate carrier for investigation. The carrier will, within such time as may be prescribed, advise the Commission in writing, with a copy to the complainant, of its satisfaction of the complaint or of its refusal or inability to do so. Where there are clear indications from the carrierâ(TM)s report or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed, without response to the complainant. In all other cases, the Commission will contact the complainant regarding its review and disposition of the matters raised. If the complainant is not satisfied by the carrierâ(TM)s response and the Commissionâ(TM)s disposition, it may file a formal complaint in accordance with  1.721 of this part.
A quick summary of the old/existing process:
The FCC informs the company of the complaint. If they don't resolve it, the consumer can file a formal complaint ($255)
In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database and acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies.
And the new version:
1.717 Procedure.
The Commission will forward informal complaints to the appropriate carrier for investigation and may set a due date for the carrier to provide a written response to the informal complaint to the Commission, with a copy to the complainant. The response will advise the Commission of the carrierâ(TM)s satisfaction of the complaint or of its refusal or inability to do so. Where there are clear indications from the carrierâ(TM)s response or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed. In all other cases, the Commission will notify the complainant that if the complainant is not satisfied by the carrierâ(TM)s response, or if the carrier has failed to submit a response by the due date, the complainant may file a formal complaint in accordance with  1.721 of this part.
A quick summary of the proposed process:
The FCC informs the company of the complaint. If they don't resolve it, the consumer can file a formal complaint ($255)
In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database and acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies.
I've had to contact the FCC a few times, and all it did was increase my frustration at the situation at hand. A lot of time filling out forms, with zero impact on anything.
$225 is sufficient to keep me from hoping that they just might actually be effective the next time around.
Check your premises.
"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
How is that wrong?
File informal complaint, FCC does not review, sends it to offending company.
File formal complaint, pay $225, FCC reviews complaint.
So, the FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint.
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.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Either way, the FCC will still ignore individual informal complaints for free and ignore individual formal complaints for $250.
(The Citizens United ruling makes corporations "people" but sadly, contrary to the Declaration of Independence, apparently not all people are created equal in the eyes of our various governmental agencies and representatives.)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...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.
-Styopa
When a story breaks, it's often unclear what the facts are, and the reporting is subject to change. This is not unusual.
You are correct, it's not unusual. The problem though is it *should* be unusual, or at least rare if standard journalistic practices where being followed. Why is it customary to *verify* facts using multiple primary sources? Because if you do that, you won't get the actual facts wrong nearly as often.
So, let's all put on our big boy pants and call the media on this failure to do their jobs and chase the profits and prestige of being FIRST to print, to heck with verifying the fact cause we can just retract them with some corrections after we've driven our traffic numbers up. How do we hold them accountable? Stop reading their "breaking news" stories when they are getting it wrong regularly. Mark those sites that won't be responsible journalists and treat them as what they are, tabloids, gossip sites, (or dare I say it, "false news")
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I got to say I agree, the media is quick to attach Trump, I'm defiantly right of center so I see this clearly... HOWEVER....
If you honestly review both sides of the spectrum here, neither has the corner of the market on factual reporting. At least SOME of the critique of the likes of Fox News is justified. This issue may be prevalent in the "liberal" media, but the "conservative" side isn't without it's similar practices...
Also, I think Trump invites this kind of thing with his incessant "fake news" tweets and I think it's on purpose. He drives the cycle and they willingly participate... It's like showing a red flag to a bull doing that kind of thing to the press. They charge him with something stupid or untrue, he tweets about it... Rinse lather and repeat. They both drive this cycle for their own reasons.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Also, am I the only one who's sick and tired of hearing mainstream media called "liberal biased"
Yes. The people who say that shit do NOT mean conservative and liberal as they are written in the dictionary, where liberals want government to control business but stay out of your personal lives, and conservatives want government to stay out of business, but all up in your personal business. (They, of course, think that government could never be up in their personal business, because they are stupid.) They actually mean "hippies" when they say "liberals"
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I see one and only one bias: Pro-corporate, anti-worker. The drive is always for more free trade, more globalism, less safety and environmental regulations, less social safety programs and more of the military industrial complex. We're thrown a bone on social issues to chew on while all the meat goes to the guys running the board of directors.
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... after I filed an informal complaint to the FCC about their data usage calculations and trying to sell me on a much more expensive plan ($40 per line per month for four lines). I asked them how they knew about my complaint and the guy whoâ(TM)ll called said they saw my name and cell number on the complaint. So companies are either notified, or they monitor the complaint stream.
this brings up an interesting question. Here on /. we're used to not RTFA (reading the f****** article). We took that up a notch years ago and started not RTFS (Reading the f****** summary). Progress continued as progress does and now we don't even RTFS (Read the f******* Summary). At last we've reached what I would call "Late stage Slashdot" where even the Subby doesn't RTFS.
I'm not sure where we go from here. Does subby not RTFH (Read the f****** Headline)? And even if we can achieve that, what then? It's like those questions about the existence of God. Could subby sub a story so devoid of content that subby couldn't sub it?
These weighty matters are what keep me up at night.
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Used to be that there'd be a couple of newspapers in town, each proudly wearing its bias and most everyone aware of the bias. This was repeated to a large extend when radio and TV showed up on the scene.
Now, they're all owned by the same couple of companies, all pushing mostly the same agenda and just pretending bias.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Mine are as follow : "In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database , company ignore the complaint and forward it , and FCC DO NOT acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies and will now ONLY start to act when there is a formal $225 paid complaint".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The Verge article was dead on balls accurate in this case. They included the Democratic criticism (which turned out to be accurate per the followup), and the FCC response initially denying it, and then reported on not hearing additional followup. It then further elaborated on why this change would undermine the process. It could not possibly have been less biased. This is the problem with right wingers, what you call "fake news" on the left is such extreme nitpicking that's it's either not accurate to begin with (as here), or shortly corrected (something the right *never* does because they're intentionally lying and distorting facts). The level of bias between most of the left (non-zero but not extreme) and most of the right (overtly extreme) isn't even in the same universe, stop drawing false equivalencies.
If it was "dead on balls accurate' it wouldn't have needed corrections.
Update and correction July 11th, 12:30PM ET:
The article has been updated to include the FCC’s response and to clarify that the informal complaints change was expressed by the congressmen; this article previously described the change as requiring consumers to pay a $225 fee, as stated in the letter.
Update July 11th, 5:45PM ET:
This story has been updated to discuss the specific language at issue and include further response from the FCC.
"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
How is that wrong?
File informal complaint, FCC does not review, sends it to offending company.
File formal complaint, pay $225, FCC reviews complaint.
So, the FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint.
From the sound of it and what somebody has posted of the current rules, it is implying that the FCC is wanting to change the rules. If nothing else, it's clickbait tactics which shouldn't be given the time of day.
You're entitled to your own opinion. Not to your facts.
Here are 87 FCC enforcement actions from the last six months.
https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/...
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.
And if there's one thing the Pai FCC is known for, it's telling the truth.
Old:
--
Where there are clear indications from the carrie's report or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed, without response to the complainant. In all other cases, the Commission will contact the complainant
--
New:
--
Where there are clear indications from the carrier's response or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed. In all other cases, the Commission will notify the complainant
--
Looks to me the word was changed from "contact the complainant" to "notify the complainant".
> for carriers the best practice will be to ignore all complaints or to fail to respond
I would say the opposite. It's easy to fix the 0.1% of issues that are reported to the FCC. If complaints regulators know about are ignored, that's when regulators start taking a closer look at the company. They don't follow up on each complaint individually, they do take note of companies that have thousands of unresolved complaints.
So I get modded to "Troll" even here, with this? Are there actually Ajit Pai fans on here? If so why do you hate the Internet and your own country so goddamned much? The guy is a CANCER and there needs to be strong CHEMO to get rid of him before he spreads even farther. Seriously what's wrong with you people?
None of those updates made the original version wrong. Bottom line, forwarding to the company doesn't count as doing anything, and trying to claim the explanation as demonstrating a factual inaccuracy, and the moderations supporting that, is nothing but the kind of dishonest bullshit you right wingers are trying to use to try to pretend left media is even remotely as dishonest as the right.
Forwarding doesn't count. That wasn't their current policy. The original may have lacked them trying to claim forwarding does count, and if that's enough to say it was wrong, take a good hard look at the state of media bias and the right wing propaganda that is leading you people to attack this truth. It wasn't wrong.
None of those updates made the original version wrong. Bottom line, forwarding to the company doesn't count as doing anything, and trying to claim the explanation as demonstrating a factual inaccuracy, and the moderations supporting that, is nothing but the kind of dishonest bullshit you right wingers are trying to use to try to pretend left media is even remotely as dishonest as the right.
Forwarding doesn't count. That wasn't their current policy. The original may have lacked them trying to claim forwarding does count, and if that's enough to say it was wrong, take a good hard look at the state of media bias and the right wing propaganda that is leading you people to attack this truth. It wasn't wrong.
Accuracy in reporting is more than just repeating something. Is it really accurate to report that "Slashdot user fafalone is a pedophile" followed hours or days later by a correction "The article has been updated to clarify the pedophile charge was made by somebody"? I doubt you would you just happily say "Of course their story was balls-on accurate, they have no obligation to confirm what they are reporting before reporting it".
As for "dishonest bullshit you right wingers blah blah", you don't know me or my politics. You're probably OK in person but you lose all perspective and manners at the keyboard. Social media is truly toxic.
A politician tells lies to spread fear to gain or hold power. Golly! When has that ever happened before?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Accurate before the fact too. Identify any instance in which the FCC would review a complaint without the $225 fee after the change-that-is-not-a-change.
Acurate after the FCC's post-hoc response. Even more accurate after the subsequent update in the summary-linked article:
"The Federal Communications Commission has dropped the parts of its proposal dealing with informal complaints, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The move comes after Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel requested the provisions be struck. Several officials cited the political backlash over the issue as a reason the FCC will not vote on those provisions Thursday, with one official saying the proposal on informal complaints was never a âoeconservative plotâ intended to harm consumers."
It's almost as if the world continues to move on in increments after an article is published, and those increments are added to the articles.
Identify the wrong facts. You haven't, yet. You've merely accepted the FCC's response as true, despite the FCC's own subsequent actions.
Your post is deicdedly bad. You will not follow up, or will merely fall back upon "lol not a journalist, f' you."