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FTC: say goodbye to "Stacey at Account Holder Services" [telecom]

[FTC press release]

The Federal Trade Commission's work to stop deceptive pre-recorded "robocalls" took another step forward today as a federal court halted a major telemarketing operation that made millions of illegal phone calls pitching worthless extended auto warranties and credit card interest rate-reduction programs. At the request of the FTC, a federal court judge in Chicago has entered an order stopping the operation's calls, temporarily freezing its assets, and appointing a receiver to take control of the operation." ----- rest:

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- nothing in the press release about the banks and credit card companies agreeing to prompt refunds for any of the ripped off money.

oh, and:

"The FTC reminds consumers that if they get a robocall they did not authorize, they can file a complaint by going to:

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or by calling 1-888-382-1222"

- however, the web page will NOT accept a complaint if you don't have a CNID number to fill in to the FTC box. Which happens, of course, if you either don't pay for CNID, don't have a display, or if they've been blocking it.

(And yes, I've written Real USPS Letters to the FTC as well as to my US Senators pointing out this little problem. No reply. No surprise).

_____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key snipped-for-privacy@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Reply to
danny burstein
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I've filed numerous complaints about these robo-callers, through the web page. As I recall they ask if you know the phone number of the caller or the name of the caller, and I can supply the (obviously phony) name the caller used. Don't know if my complaints had anything to do with it, but I'm sure glad to hear action is being taken against them.

Reply to
Jim Haynes

I explored the FTC's role in Do Not Call violations some years ago. I managed to speak with someone who was knowledgeable. She told me that their mandate on that list was simply to gather statistics; that they had neither the resources nor the Congressional mandate to enforce the list. But, she added, Congress had included the provision to give individuals the option to file a civil lawsuit for any individual violators. So, if you're really, really rich, there is recourse.

Reply to
Sam Spade

And guess who I got a call from yesterday ;-)

I was ready as the CID was XXX-000-XXXX

-Hudson

Reply to
Hudson Leighton

OK, I'll bite: Whom do I sue if Caller ID says XXX-XXX-XXXX? The courts won't accept a suit against "John Doe" unless there is some other named defendant who can be subpoenaed to tell the judge who and where John Doe is.

I suppose I could name the phone company as a codefendant, but (a) which one? (I'll bet only the caller's own LEC knows who he/she/it is), and (b) I have AT&T and they use an arbitration agreement that makes it impossible to sue them. And I hear they have a policy of never releasing the information from Call Trace (#57) even if you get them to turn it on.

Only the FCC can cut this Gordian knot, but it doesn't look to me like they care about doing their job anymore. They'd rather spend their time going after "indecent" TV shows and looking for ways to silence conservative talk radio.

Reply to
John David Galt

There is.

Nope. If you send a subpoena to your local telco, they will provide ANI information. You set up a suit against Jon Doe in order to get the subpoena issued, then once the telco provides the ANI data it turns into a suit against the party responsible.

You _must_ send a subpoena, nothing else will extract the information. Unless a court requests the information, the telco will not provide it.

There's no knot. Try it, it works. I have used it against anonymous fax scammers.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Hudson, on 6/29 (at 2:18 pm my time), I got a call from

| 866-555-1212 | TOLL FREE CALL

and no, I didn't answer; and no, the caller left no message :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp

-- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

Reply to
tlvp

Doesn't look like it's doing any good. I've gotten 6 calls from "Stacey" since

7/7/10, five of them on my cellphone. On one day (July 7) "she" called my cell three times within 20 minutes. And the sixth telemarketing call originated from a wireless number with crude audio, to my home phone. No, wait a minute, that was Rachel.

The timing, how the audio is delivered, suggests that the telemarketer may have intended most of these calls to be delivered to voice mail rather than to be answered live, since my voice mail almost always captured the beginning of the pitch rather than starting after the pitch started. And a quick web search reveals that the calls haven't stopped, and might not have even slowed down since the FTC did their recent enforcement actions.

I don't know what's more bizarre, a large telemarketer defying a Federal court order, or all the people who believed all their garbage.

***** Moderator's Note *****

What's most bizarre is that voters actually believe this kind of charade, again and again and again, when politicians and bureaucrats proclaim that they're "solved" a problem, get their Thirty seconds on the evening news, and then go back to kowtowing to their campaign contributors while laughing - again - at how gullible we are.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Alan Boritz

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