This is a story about a man, a message, a federal lawsuit and some very unintended consequences.
James Cubbage is an Olympia businessman who came home one day last year to this prerecorded message on his answering machine: "Hi, it's Julie calling from Talbots with a reminder that you have only a few days left to take advantage of your exclusive 20 percent savings pass and free shipping...
I don't see the (bigger) problem here. For better or worse, the man's wife was a customer of the store, and they took advantage of that "pre existing relationship" loophole.
So the law, in general, hasn't been vacated.
(That's not to say the law is anywhere near perfect. It's pretty lame, and rarely enforced. I just receiver Yet Another Robot Call from "Rachel of Account Services", a business that's gazillions of complaints to the FTC and related regulatory groups, and ain't nothing happening).
It takes a long time for the "pre existing relationship" to expire. It sounds like the plantiff was loaded and cocked to shoot the intruter before he came through the door.
Speaking of which, how does "Rachel" and her gang get into the public telephone system with such high volume, undetected (undetected enough so that apparently nobody can seem to find them) ? VOIP?
All they had to do with tell the offending caller that they no longer wanted them on their do not call list, at that point should they call again, then there is cause of an action.
Per Michael Moroney:
According to the letters I've been getting from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office (in response to my filing complaints about telemarketing calls to my cell phone), telemarketers are using VOIP services to spoof callerIDs, relaying calls between providers, and moving offshore - all of which, according the atty gen's office, make prosecution impossible for them.
Which, of course, is total garbage. Just get ahold of someone who's been scammed by these folk and trace the credit card transaction.
Could "Rachel" get away with this for a few weeks? Sure. But this specific group has been active for over a year. And the calls are coming to my numbers in multiple parts of the country.
- What I don't understand is why the FCC/FTC are doing diddly squat. Well, I can understand why that would be their initial position, but Congressional folk are getting hefty numbers of complaints. (And they're getting their own batch of calls, too).
In danny burstein writes: [snippeth]
But that's part of why I don't understand the FTC/FCC ass sitting. Senator Charles Schumer [D-NY] himself, while at a meeting on Capitol Hill, got one of these calls to his cell phone. And he went publicly ballistic over it. Yet this garbage, especially the "Rachel" calls, continue to this day.
"But here comes the cavalry! Senator Chuck Schumer says he's "had enough" - after getting a robocall about fraudulent car warranty renewals during a health care meeting on Capitol Hill last week, he held a Sunday press conference to demand a Federal Trade Commission investigation into the businesses behind the calls..."
Per danny burstein:
That is the best news I've heard in a long time... and now I feel like I can stop obsessing over the issue.
Now that people in power are getting irritated by it, something will be done.
Only bad outcome I can see - short of them having assistants screen calls - is some technological solution that they can afford and the rest of us cannot.
Per danny burstein:
The cynic in me thinks "Of course....".
But can anybody document/cite in support of that?
Check out the date of that article. It does not look like it did any good.
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