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Privacy Your Rights Online

Suing the Phone Company 19

Posted by michael from the A-for-effort dept.
TTop writes: "A Washington insurance agent has sued Verizon for harassment after receiving repeated annoying telemarketing calls from Verizon. These particular telemarketers would leave misleading messages on his voice mail like "It is very important that you contact our business office about your account", and continued to call despite his request to be put on a "do not call" list. He even had an temporary anti-harrasment order served on Verizon's regional president. While he ended up losing the case, other state's laws might be more permissive of this approach to protecting privacy."
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Suing the Phone Company More

Suing the Phone Company

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  • Here in Austin, Texas I occasionally get automated calls from a machine that leaves a message along the lines of "Hi, this is Louis Regal, and I am about to make a very important decision without your input, unless you call me as soon as possible . . . ." The man's voice is that slow-speaking, over modulated tone that commercials use to sell legal or medical stuff. I guess it works well with old people.

    The number: 1-877-774-7998.

    The other machine call I often get is from a guy who legally changed his name to "John World Peace" and is running for Governor or something, and wants you to "cast your vote for World Peace !" He usually rants and raves a bit about the Railroad Commissioner or something, I usually have a good laugh at his name and the chances of Texas electing him and hang up.

  • Me, too. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick DOT The DOT Red AT gmail DOT com> on Friday August 17, 2001 @07:46PM (#2115283) Journal
    My wife's cell phone account (AT&T Wireless) kept getting the same voicemail message as this guy: "It is very important that you contact our business office about your account." We don't have any Verizon accounts, and when I tried (repeatedly) to call the number they left, I got a Verizon Wireless voicemail system that refused to connect me to a human being untill I entered my cell phone number, but when I entered my wife's AWS number, surprise surprise, the computer didn't recognize it. I then tried calling the Verizon Wireless office but the drone who answered the phone refused to connect me to anyone (but I could leave a message). Bah! As much as I hate USQwest, if I ever move I'm going to be sure not to move to an area served by Verizon!

    Thanks for letting me vent.

  • Where I live (Idaho) we have a law that allows people to put themselves on a state-wide No Call List [state.id.us] operated by the Attorney General's office. For a $10 fee you get three years of "protection" from telemarketers who by law are not allowed to call anyone on the list. The telemarketers also share the administrative costs associated with the list since they are required to purchase the list at $25 every three months. It seems to be working pretty well here and considering the annoyance, $10 is a small price to pay (IMO).
  • "It may be harassment, but it is not unlawful,"
    says the judge. Well, let *me* go around calling people constantly, leaving repeated messages, and refusing to stop when requested, and see if *I* don't get sued. I bet you it's unlawful as hell. And the phone company's response?

    "Should you continue to pursue any judicial action against the company, please be advised that Verizon will pursue all legal remedies available to it against you."
    Of course...

  • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Being a former Verizon customer, I know first hand that are one of the most abuseive telcos around. While I'm not surprised a judge ruled against this guy (can you say DEEP PPOCKETS), hopefully more people will step forward and put this monster it it's place.

  • Interesting (Score:4, Interesting)

    by B. Samedi ( 48894 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @02:25PM (#2134833)
    It's interesting how you can sue a normal business for bad workmanship, overcharging, etc. and the courts will go along with it. But all of a sudden you do it to major company and the courts are coming down on the side of the major company. At least where I live if my phone company cheeses me off I can switch to another one. And at last count I have at least five to switch too (although three of them are pretty iffy choices). Now I have the problem of monopolized electrical service but that's another story.

    The big question though is why you can't sue these companies the same way you can any other company? What makes them so special beyond amounts of money? It's like another poster mentioned, if I was calling someone all the time and leaving messages and wouldn't stop I'd be in jail. But all of a sudden a major company does it and it's alright. I feel the same way about the federal budget. If I ran my personal finances that way I'd be in jail. These institions should be held to the same accountability standards as the rest of us.

    • In my area, you can switch from the big telco...unless you want to keep your DSL up and running with a non-telco ISP. Seems that if Bellsouth owns the lines in your neighborhood, you can only use Bellsouth for DSL service if your phone service is through another carrier. If you switch to Bellsouth for phone service, suddenly your number shows up in all the proper systems to be apportioned for another DSL provider.

      I have always hated Bellsouth due to my experiences with them at work with isdn and frame relay services. It REALLY pisses me off that with DSL, I have to be sending cash to Bellsouth every month one way or the other. And don't say "get a cable modem"...guess who runs that in my neighborhood. Here's a hint...the company can be abbreviated the same as Bull Shit.

  • Isn't it a $500 fine? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Friday August 17, 2001 @01:25PM (#2138314)

    Isn't there a a fine if you call someone after being asked to be put on the do-not-call list? I thought there was, and it takes effect immeadiatly, not in 6 weeks while you circulate lists, right now.

    In this computer age changing your do-not-call list can be done in real time with any half way decient comptuer and database. They should use one.

    I use a cell phone exclusivly. Call me to make an unsolicitiade sales call and I will sue you, and I know the law is stronger becuse I pay for calls.

  • This may be a day late and a dollar short, but in my state we have one of those no call lists and if you read the fine print it says that telemarketers are exempted from the list if you've done business with them in the past. In other words, if joe blow does business with them, the telemarketers have every right to harass joe blow till he turns blue in the face... And of course, in our world of giant corporations, doing business with verizon probably gives some nobodies who are considered "corporate partners" with verizon the right to harass joe blow..

  • Here in Japan we have cell phone services that are light years ahead of what's offered in other countries: almost-passable web browsing, Java applets, and e-mail.

    There's a problem, though: spam. It's bad enough to get a dozen messages that take forever to delete with the bad UI, but the last straw is having to pay to recieve them - around 2 cents for a 500-byte message. Luckily, I can set my phone to recieve from only certain people, but that can be inconvenient. I guess what we really need is good spam-filtering.

    Back to regular telephones: again, here in Japan some phones are equipped to display the phone numbers of callers, and you can even set up filters: does this kind of thing exist elsewhere?

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