FTC Sues First Do-Not-Call Violator

from the if-they-lose-can-we-call-them-at-dinner-time? dept

While the FCC has been going around threatening Do Not Call list violators with fines, it looks like the FTC is finally taking some action. They've filed the first lawsuit for violating the Do Not Call list on a telemarketing firm in Nevada that was selling time shares. The company apparently called over 300,000 numbers that were on the list, and also broke rules concerning the use of automatic dialers. Since the official fines are supposed to be $11,000 per violation, in theory, the fine could be over $3 billion, though no one actually expects that to happen. Maybe the fine should just be to put these folks somewhere where they need to answer phone calls from telemarketers all day long.
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  • identicon
    Griffon, 1 Sep 2004 @ 10:31am

    Good!

    About bloody time somebody went after these guys. Yeah the telemarketers like to point out how many people they employee but you know what the world would be a better place without them and all those folks will find jobs doing something less obnoxious (or one would hope, like maybe selling crack on a street corner).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, 1 Sep 2004 @ 11:02am

    Reward?

    Maybe they could sieze the assets of the company, sell everything at public auction and evenly distribute the proceeds between everyone who received one of their annoying, illegal sales calls?

    1) It would encourage more people to put their name on the Do Not Call list (incoming, unwanted call = annoyance = free money).

    2) It would be a good precedent to set to help discourage further abuses of the system.

    It would be nice if the people who owned/operated the company were also banned by law from ever having their own phone numbers placed on any Do Not Call list and their phone numbers should be made available to the public.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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