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California Sues Company For Violating Do Not Call List

Legal Issues

from the state-enforcement? dept

Fri, Nov 7th 2003 10:41am — Mike Masnick
Earlier this week, many folks misunderstood the FCC's announcement that they were fining AT&T for calling people who asked not to be called. Despite popular perception, that case was not about the national "do not call" list, but rather about AT&T's own internal "do not call" list, where people had explicitly told AT&T not to call them. Now, however, we may have the first real lawsuit filed concerning the national "do not call list" - but it's being filed by the California attorney general. I didn't know the specifics of the law, but I had been under the impression that the FTC (or the FCC) would be the enforcement arm. The article, though, explains that the FTC and FCC are simply compiling a list of the complaints, which are then available to law enforcement to take action on. However, the details are still a little off. It appears that there are various restrictions on who can sue who for how much - so that this lawsuit actually would have much lower levels of fines than the $11,000 per incident that has been talked about elsewhere.
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  • identicon
    Bob Dole, 10 Nov 2003 @ 6:28am

    Don't call me, I'll call you

    Both the $780k fine against AT&T and the California AG action are enforcement actions under the 10-year old telemarketing law known as TCPA. (The internal AT&T Do Not Call list isn't voluntary, it's mandated by the FCC.)

    Section 227 of that law says that a state AG can bring a civil action on behalf of the state's residents to enjoin violations of the rules and to recover damages. Neat, huh? FCC & FTC are working on additional, national cases right now.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    LittleW0lf, 10 Nov 2003 @ 1:38pm

    About time...

    These idiots at American Home have called me recently too, they called 7 times in the course of two hours, between 4pm and 6pm on one day. I am on the national do-not-call registry, but figured that enforcement would be version 2.0 of the law, to be added at a future date. Looks like I can start filing complaints now because California is looking after us (or more importantly, they have found a way to fix the budget at $100,000 a pop.)

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Kathryn, 1 Jul 2009 @ 1:28pm

    ATT repeated robot calls to customers when asked not to call

    Has anyone else been driven nuts by ATT robotic phone calls after you added a service. I've repeatedly asked, demanded, they not call me before noon, but they persist each time I add a service. They destroyed 3 days of sleep in a row to tell me what I already knew. The exception to the federal "Do Not Call" list for companies you deal with IS NOT PERMISSION FOR TELEPHONE HARASSMENT BY COMPANIES YOU DEAL WITH. ONE CALL PER WEEK AT A PRE-AGREED TIME FRAME IS ENOUGH, IF REQUIRED, IF THERE IS A HUMAN BEING CALLING AND A GOOD REASON -- BUT NEVER EVER REPEAT ROBOTIC CALLS 4 DAYS IN A ROW.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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