FCC Proposes Fining AT&T Over DNC Violation

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The FCC has just announced a proposed $780,000 fine against AT&T for violating the recently enacted Do Not Call telemarketing rules. The FCC charges that AT&T marketers called 29 consumers on 78 different occasions after those consumers had signed up on the Do Not Call list. The FCC has posted a press release (pdf) to this effect on their web site."

Protect Personal Privacy!

[dukeluke]

Personally, I support the DNC list - I hate being interrupted at all hours of day or night for solicitations. My motto? - If I want your product/service - I'll come to you to find out what you have to offer.

This could be wonderful, but it could backfire

[FreeBSD Goddess]

I say this is great because if AT&T gets fined, it shows that nobody's above the rules and will send a message to all the smaller telemarketers who might be tempted to ignore the DNC. It's nice to know that nobody, no matter how big or small, is above the rules.

On the other hand, as we all know, the DNC is hotly contested in court as possible free speech violations, among other things. I don't think the courts really care about the small telemarketer and their rights, but someone with the size, lobbying ability, and lawyer teams that AT&T has really could put up a good fight to the law.

It's a nice precedent to see AT&T fined for this, but I hope it doesn't backfire.

Not the "Do Not Call" list

[monkeydo]

This is NOT about the federal "Do Not Call" list.

The Commission found that AT&T apparently made telephone solicitation calls to 29

consumers on 78 separate occasions after those consumers had requested that AT&T not call
them again. The Commission therefore concluded that AT&T had apparently violated the FCC's company-specific Do-Not-Call rule, section 64.1200(e) of the Commission?s rules.

This is based on the rules that have long been in place that you can request that a company put you on their internal do not call list.

Good. You must enforce it for it to work

[zapp]

Having a DNC list is great and all, but if you either can't or don't enforce it, it's worthless.

I'd say AT&T is testing their limits, seeing what they can get away with. If the FCC lets them go on this one, I suspect the DNC list will become pretty useless.

Re:This could be wonderful, but it could backfire

[gooru]

How could this possibly backfire? As far as I'm concerned, small telemarketers need to follow the rules, too.

Or, do you mean this is a free speech violation? Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean I have to listen. I also have the right to freedom from your speech.

Re:This could be wonderful, but it could backfire

[mopslik]

On the other hand, as we all know, the DNC is hotly contested in court as possible free speech violations, among other things.

I could never understand why it's being pushed as a free speech violation so much. If I stood outside someone's house every night, shouting my own personal philosophies, I could easily be arrested for disturbing the peace. If that person sound-proofed their windows, I couldn't appeal to some higher authority about my freedom of speech being violated. Telemarketers, however, are free to call me every other day at dinnertime to try and flog their wares.

Yes, people have a right to speak, but that doesn't mean I have to listen to it. I should also have the right to "ignore" what's being said.

Re:Good - let's get this tested right away

[Liselle]

Of course, this just means that telemarketers will start using the well-known loopholes that allow the other 20% of calls to get through. I've already gotten several calls from "charities" and "fundraisers" that were actually trying to sell you something, ultimately, just not at that exact second.

Sneaky bastards, telemarketers are.

I got a call from Dell yesterday...

[telstar]

They were calling to sell me broadband access... but they made sure to preface their call with "you recently purchased a laptop from us". As this Do Not Call thing swings into use I forsee the value of knowing who companies sell their products to significantly more valuable than it's ever been. It used to be that only Radio Shack asked who you were ... get used to EVERYONE doing it ... because they'll be able to partner with other retailers and cross-sell products using that loophole in the Do-Not-Call law.

Re:This could be wonderful, but it could backfire

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I meant someone with a lot of lobbying power and many lawyers - a giant corporation like AT&T - is much better equipped to fight this than your ordinary telemarketing firm. It's a possibility that AT&T could convince a judge in some jurisdiction that's favorable to them that the DNC list should be overturned. I hope it doesn't happen, but unfortunately, if you have enough money, you can usually buy your way around the law.

"Proposed" ???

[seanmeister]

Why the hell is this "proposed"? It should just be - the law's in place, ATT is violating it, and they should pay the fine - end of story.

Jeezus, I'd love to have a "proposed" fine the next time I get a speeding ticket.

Re:Not the "Do Not Call" list

[Enry]

There's two different things here.

The Telco act of 1996 required that telemarketers maintain a Do-Not-Call list of their own. If a person was called and asked to be added to the list, the telemarketer had to add the person to that list and amek sure said person was never called again.

The Federal Do-Not-Call list is an extension of that. It has a list of people who are on everyone's Do-Not-Call list.

Given the Federal Do-Not-Call list has only been active for a month and the FCC has been investigating AT&T for 'several months' (read the PDF), that would imply that AT&T is violating the first instance of the Do-Not-Call list.

Re:Good - let's get this tested right away

[djh101010]

And actually, this being a civil rather than a criminal matter makes proving the case that much easier - instead of "Beyond a reasonable doubt", it has to be proven "By a preponderance of evidence".

To put that into perspective - OJ was found "Not Guilty" in a criminal court, because it wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it. The civil court proceedings, however, found him guilty "By a preponderance of evidence". So, by one standard he's not guilty, by another he is guilty. At the end of the day, he killed 'em, but the case wasn't good enough to prosecute criminally.

For our purposes of the DNC list, I would think that this will make nailing the slime who try to weasel through the loopholes easier...we don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they're a weasel, we just have to show through a preponderance of evidence that they are a small, furry mammal of the Mustelid family, behaving in a weasel-like way.

The preceeding is noted as being gratuitously insulting to weasels, for which I apologize.

Re:Good - let's get this tested right away

[Randy Wang]

What in hell's name were they thinking? $780'000?

Please tell me how thats a deterrent to something like AT&T?

Re:Protect Personal Privacy!

[jfengel]

I mostly support you on this, but not quite completely. I am the owner of two small businesses, and a small business finds it very hard to get the word out about its existence. If you don't know it's out there, you won't go looking for it.

Everybody knows AT&T, and as far as I'm concerned they should pay the maximum penalty plus an idiot tax for doing precisely what they've been told not to do. But I wish I could find a way to get in contact with the many people who would probably come see the plays that my theater troupe puts on if they only knew it existed.

I'm not trying to claim that I'm going to try telemarketing for that; I wouldn't even if it would be cost-effective. I'm not even proposing that telemarketing should be allowed at all. It's an obvious violation of privacy, as well as being obnoxious, and if obnoxious is all you've got, give up. I'm just challenging one of your assumptions, that "I'll come to you to find out what you have to offer."

For myself, I'll keep trying the old-fashioned way: putting on good theater and hoping that eventually positive word of mouth will bring people out to see it, and being grateful that I'm not expecting to make a living off of it.

(And passing up the crass opportunity to get myself modded down by putting the URL for my theater group on Slashdot. Not that I won't get modded down anyway for explaining, if not excusing, some telemarketers.)

Effective strategy for deaaling with telemarketers

[KojakBang]

1. Get a Caller ID Box. Your telco probably will charge you a fee for sending the information, since as they see it, you might decide not to answer the phone based on who is calling and therefore they will not earn the connection charge on the call. 2. Block Withheld Numbers if you live in a jurisdiction where withholding your number is still legal. Your telco probably will charge you for this, but it's worth it. {before I had mine blocked, I used to say to Number Withheld: "Are you a paedophile? Because your number is withheld." That saw them off. On my mobile, where there is no such service available, I have to resort to doing an impression of a recorded announcement: "Anonymous calls are not welcome on this line. If your business is important you may ring back without withholding your number. Goodbye." 3. Don't say anything if you don't recognise the caller's number. This spins them out, because they think it could be an answering machine. A legitimate caller will ask for you by name. A sleazeball telemarketer will just hang up. 4. Ask them how they got your number. This distracts them from the purpose of the call and maybe gets them into an infinite loop. 5. If all else fails, remember that it is your line, and you are under no obligation to be polite with unwanted callers. Any obligation of politeness would fall on the originator, not the recipient. I think the best solution would be for the do-not-call list to be in the phone directory, by placing a symbol next to the numbers of people who did not wish to receive unsolictited sales calls. I'm not so anti-social that I'd consider going ex-directory, because that would jeopardise things for people who might have a legitimate reason to call me {and because I like looking up my name in the new phone book every 18 months or so, it gives me a kick without harming anyone else}. Having the "do not call" list in the phone book itself would be almost foolproof. Everyone with a phone line gets the phone book, so there would be no shortage of witnesses to the fact that your number was on the list. The only downside is that you might have to wait till the new directory was published in order to get your name properly DNC'd. But the telemarketing companies could be made to subscribe to an update list as a condition of their operating licence.

Re:Good - let's get this tested right away

[hazem]

It has to come from some manager's budget... he definitely won't be getting a bonus.

Plus, they most likely did not get $780,000 in returns from those calls. A part of the business that is bleeding money, with no real anticipated return is likely to be cut off.

Re:Protect Personal Privacy!

[Liselle]

I'd be more worried about posting the URL, and your theater group's webserver catching on fire moments later.

As for advertising, word-of-mouth has always been the most effective and strongest form of advertising, and will continue to be for the forseeable long-term future. Nothing gets customers like referrals. There are other avenues for small businesses to get the word out. Interrupting Joe Six-pack's dinner with an unsolicited phone call is not a particularly smart one, even without a DNC list.

Re:Not the "Do Not Call" list

[mkldev]

This is just the tip of the iceberg that they've discovered. I can add another ten calls to their stats myself. I think their numbers drastically underestimate the harrassment of AT&T's local services division....

I would bet that we could find many thousands of people who have been repeatedly harrassed by them. At that rate, suddenly we're talking about a couple hundred dollars per person harrassed, which is almost certainly more than made up for by the number of suckers... err... customers they gained.

No, anything less than 780 Million dollars is unreasonably low, IMHO. This is nothing more than a light slap on the wrist....

Re:Good - let's get this tested right away

[Atryn]

What in hell's name were they thinking? $780'000?

Umm, that is in the FIRST month of the DNC being enforced. I'm sure if AT&T wants to continue to pay $780,000 PER MONTH that they will continue their behavior. At nearly $10 Million / year, I do believe that's a deterrent. The LD market isn't that great anymore.

they may settle

[avandesande]

Interestingly enough, I believe that att may actually not fight the fine. Fighting it would be a PR nightmare. How can they justify with public support the position that they have to call people who explcitely desire to not be called?

Fining att was a smart move by the fcc. If it was some scumbag telemarketing company that got fined they would probably care less what their PR appearance was.

fines aren't enough

[bitspotter]

The problem with fines is that they end up being looked at as the cost of doing business. We need more appropriate penalties for corporations. Corporate death penalty, anyone? What would be analogous to imprisonment for a publically-traded company?

Re:"Proposed" ???

[BladeRider]

The court that will be hearing your case will do everything they can to dissuade you from contesting your ticket. They'll threaten you with having to pay full court costs (often more than the fine). Even if you have a good case, you'll probably end up paying at least the amount of the original fine. Local governments can't generate revenue if they dismiss cases.

Re:"Proposed" ???

[Xerithane]

The court that will be hearing your case will do everything they can to dissuade you from contesting your ticket. They'll threaten you with having to pay full court costs (often more than the fine). Even if you have a good case, you'll probably end up paying at least the amount of the original fine. Local governments can't generate revenue if they dismiss cases.


This is Stupid and Wrong. You are talking to someone who used to regularly get tickets across 3 states. The only time I've paid what the ticket said was when I was on a trip and would have had to drive 2 hours and it wasn't contestable over mail (which some states do.)

They don't dismiss cases, and I'm not saying they do. They do, however, decrease the fine amount considerably.

Last ticket was $170, just by showing up they offered to settle at $100 without taking it to court.