Time Warner Cable Forced To Pay $229,500 For Robocalling The Wrong Person...153 Times

from the dysfunction-junction dept

Time Warner Cable continues to be incredibly good at being incredibly bad at what it does. The cable operator already enjoys arguably the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any company in any U.S. industry, below even Comcast. Its horrible customer service is legendary, and things have actually gotten worse as the company has sat on its hands waiting to be sold off to a rotating crop of equally dysfunctional suitors. When you're this bad at what you do, you have to be truly creative in finding new and imaginative ways to annoy your customer base.

Time Warner Cable's latest incredible display of ineptitude? The cable giant has been sued for robocalling a woman 153 times regarding an overdue balance. The problem? Time Warner Cable was calling the wrong woman, who ultimately had to file suit against the cable operator to get them to stop annoying her:

"King, of Irving, Texas, 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. The calls were made through an "interactive voice response" system meant for customers who were late paying bills."

Time Warner Cable is being ordered by the courts to pay Araceli King $229,500 (or $1,500 per call) for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, not a bad payout for the woman having to delete 153 unlistened-to voicemails. The truly amazing part is that Time Warner Cable still managed to robocall the woman an additional 74 times...after the suit was filed:

"He also said 74 of the calls had been placed after King sued in March 2014, and that it was "incredible" to believe Time Warner Cable when it said it still did not know she objected. "Defendant harassed plaintiff with robo-calls until she had to resort to a lawsuit to make the calls stop, and even then TWC could not be bothered to update the information in its IVR system," Hellerstein wrote."

That's pretty impressive even for Time Warner Cable's low standards of operational efficiency. Some bad news for Time Warner Cable: the FCC actually just got done making Robocall restrictions a little tougher for violators. Surely Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus, set to potentially make $97 million as an exit package via the upcoming Charter merger, is working tirelessly at making his company much less professionally annoying.

Filed Under: do not call, robocalls, telemarketing, telephone consumer protection act
Companies: time warner cable