No, the FCC is Not Forcing Consumers To Pay $225 To File Complaints (washingtonpost.com) 119
Having your voice heard at the Federal Communications Commission could soon cost you hundreds of dollars, according to congressional Democrats Tuesday who oppose a looming rule change by the nation's top telecom and cable regulator. But that may not be the case after all, a review of the FCC proposal shows. From a report: At issue is a proposal that the FCC is expected to vote on Thursday that looks at the agency's process for handling "informal" complaints -- the kind you might file if you've received an unwanted robocall or if you've heard something indecent on the radio. Under the proposal, the FCC could soon pass the informal complaints it receives directly to the companies that consumers are complaining about, the lawmakers said in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. That might result in FCC staff no longer reviewing those submissions, they said. And customers who receive no relief from the companies would then be forced to lodge a "formal" complaint at the FCC, an existing procedure that costs $225.
"To advise consumers that they file a $225 formal complaint if not satisfied ignores the core mission of the FCC -- working in the public interest," wrote Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.). The controversy was first reported by the Verge. Staffers for the House Energy and Commerce Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FCC said in a statement that the lawmakers had misunderstood the proposal. "The item would not change the Commission's handling of informal complaints," the agency said.
"To advise consumers that they file a $225 formal complaint if not satisfied ignores the core mission of the FCC -- working in the public interest," wrote Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.). The controversy was first reported by the Verge. Staffers for the House Energy and Commerce Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The FCC said in a statement that the lawmakers had misunderstood the proposal. "The item would not change the Commission's handling of informal complaints," the agency said.
Sounds like the truth may be in the middle (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words it appears that if you want the FCC to do something other than just pass the complaint on and wash their hands of it, you will pay $225. If you're OK with that then you can still complain for free.
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the "minor" change is about setting a response timeline from WILL to MAY... big deal if its fuckpai setting that requirement to his buttbuddies.
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Except that the informal complaint may not be either seen or evaluated by the FCC staff. So it sounds like what they're doing is changing the informal complaint into a marketing tool for companies.
So the truth isn't in the middle, but much more to "The Democrat complaints were accurate" side, even though they clearly misstated the process. What's really happening is that the FCC is going to "worse than ignore" informal complaints, and you'll need to pay $225 and file a formal complaint if you want them to
Here's the actual text of the rule, before and aft (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the old / existing version:
 1.717 Procedure.
The Commission will forward informal complaints to the appropriate carrier for investigation. The carrier will, within such time as may be prescribed, advise the Commission in writing, with a copy to the complainant, of its satisfaction of the complaint or of its refusal or inability to do so. Where there are clear indications from the carrierâ(TM)s report or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed, without response to the complainant. In all other cases, the Commission will contact the complainant regarding its review and disposition of the matters raised. If the complainant is not satisfied by the carrierâ(TM)s response and the Commissionâ(TM)s disposition, it may file a formal complaint in accordance with  1.721 of this part.
A quick summary of the old/existing process:
The FCC informs the company of the complaint. If they don't resolve it, the consumer can file a formal complaint ($255)
In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database and acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies.
And the new version:
1.717 Procedure.
The Commission will forward informal complaints to the appropriate carrier for investigation and may set a due date for the carrier to provide a written response to the informal complaint to the Commission, with a copy to the complainant. The response will advise the Commission of the carrierâ(TM)s satisfaction of the complaint or of its refusal or inability to do so. Where there are clear indications from the carrierâ(TM)s response or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed. In all other cases, the Commission will notify the complainant that if the complainant is not satisfied by the carrierâ(TM)s response, or if the carrier has failed to submit a response by the due date, the complainant may file a formal complaint in accordance with  1.721 of this part.
A quick summary of the proposed process:
The FCC informs the company of the complaint. If they don't resolve it, the consumer can file a formal complaint ($255)
In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database and acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies.
That is your itnerpretation of new rule (Score:2)
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Mine are as follow : "In actual practice - the FCC logs complaints to a database , company ignore the complaint and forward it , and FCC DO NOT acts when there are many similar complaints against a company, or similar companies and will now ONLY start to act when there is a formal $225 paid complaint".
In other words, the FCC continues to operate like any other government agency when not given a carrot, and the only change is that they perhaps finally admit it.
87 enforcement actions in the last six months (Score:2)
You're entitled to your own opinion. Not to your facts.
Here are 87 FCC enforcement actions from the last six months.
https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/... [fcc.gov]
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Changed "contact" to "notify" (Score:2)
Old:
--
Where there are clear indications from the carrie's report or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in its discretion, consider a complaint proceeding to be closed, without response to the complainant. In all other cases, the Commission will contact the complainant
--
New:
--
Where there are clear indications from the carrier's response or from other communications with the parties that the complaint has been satisfied, the Commission may, in
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I've filed formal comments and formal complaints to bot the FTC and FCC.
The complaints (for specific incidents where I was harmed) have always gotten a response. Comments (for when I just want to report something, or had an issue I already resolved and don't need further restitution) don't always get a response.
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Which is totally useless. The f**king swine who call me don't ever give their real name or use their real phone number. None of the calls are from the company they reference or claim to represent. I do not have the resources or knowledge to track down the parties responsible.
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The funny part is how all the "muh Fox" and "muh Breitbart" people that you inoculated your comment against via your disclaimer will never ever ever admit that their left-wing biased sites are just as bad.
Re:The real story here... (Score:5, Informative)
Dead on accurate... after the fact. They changed their headline for one. It used to read :
"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
Whereas it now reads :
"Democrats argue a new FCC rule would hinder consumers, but Commission says they got it wrong".
This is a typical tactic, where you post an initial story, with initial "wrong facts" and "sensational" headline. Get a massive ton of shares of social media and get the outrage rolling, and then silently update the story to be less biased/sensational when the initial surge of visits/shares has died down.
Make sure to hide the correction way down. The Verge's story has this paragraph now :
"Update and correction July 11th, 12:30PM ET: The article has been updated to include the FCCâ(TM)s response and to clarify that the informal complaints change was expressed by the congressmen; this article previously described the change as requiring consumers to pay a $225 fee, as stated in the letter."
So yes, The Verge's story was initially bad. It was just later amended to be "Oh wait, lol journalism, our bad". Why did you jump at "you right-wing" people right away and call it conspiracy ?
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"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
How is that wrong?
File informal complaint, FCC does not review, sends it to offending company.
File formal complaint, pay $225, FCC reviews complaint.
So, the FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint.
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"The FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint".
How is that wrong?
File informal complaint, FCC does not review, sends it to offending company.
File formal complaint, pay $225, FCC reviews complaint.
So, the FCC wants to charge you $225 to review your complaint.
From the sound of it and what somebody has posted of the current rules, it is implying that the FCC is wanting to change the rules. If nothing else, it's clickbait tactics which shouldn't be given the time of day.
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Accurate before the fact too. Identify any instance in which the FCC would review a complaint without the $225 fee after the change-that-is-not-a-change.
Acurate after the FCC's post-hoc response. Even more accurate after the subsequent update in the summary-linked
Re: The real story here... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's unclear what the facts are... don't state things as fact then, which the initial Verge headline did. That's like one of the big problems with current day journalism, it's not based on facts.
Again : stop making this a right vs left thing. It's a bad thing regardless of your side of the political aisle.
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I got to say I agree, the media is quick to attach Trump, I'm defiantly right of center so I see this clearly... HOWEVER....
If you honestly review both sides of the spectrum here, neither has the corner of the market on factual reporting. At least SOME of the critique of the likes of Fox News is justified. This issue may be prevalent in the "liberal" media, but the "conservative" side isn't without it's similar practices...
Also, I think Trump invites this kind of thing with his incessant "fake news" twee
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When a story breaks, it's often unclear what the facts are, and the reporting is subject to change. This is not unusual.
You are correct, it's not unusual. The problem though is it *should* be unusual, or at least rare if standard journalistic practices where being followed. Why is it customary to *verify* facts using multiple primary sources? Because if you do that, you won't get the actual facts wrong nearly as often.
So, let's all put on our big boy pants and call the media on this failure to do their jobs and chase the profits and prestige of being FIRST to print, to heck with verifying the fact cause we can just retra
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The Verge article was dead on balls accurate in this case. They included the Democratic criticism (which turned out to be accurate per the followup), and the FCC response initially denying it, and then reported on not hearing additional followup. It then further elaborated on why this change would undermine the process. It could not possibly have been less biased. This is the problem with right wingers, what you call "fake news" on the left is such extreme nitpicking that's it's either not accurate to begin with (as here), or shortly corrected (something the right *never* does because they're intentionally lying and distorting facts). The level of bias between most of the left (non-zero but not extreme) and most of the right (overtly extreme) isn't even in the same universe, stop drawing false equivalencies.
If it was "dead on balls accurate' it wouldn't have needed corrections.
Update and correction July 11th, 12:30PM ET:
The article has been updated to include the FCC’s response and to clarify that the informal complaints change was expressed by the congressmen; this article previously described the change as requiring consumers to pay a $225 fee, as stated in the letter.
Update July 11th, 5:45PM ET:
This story has been updated to discuss the specific language at issue and include further response from the
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Forwarding doesn't count. That wasn't their current policy. The original may have lacked them trying to claim forwardi
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None of those updates made the original version wrong. Bottom line, forwarding to the company doesn't count as doing anything, and trying to claim the explanation as demonstrating a factual inaccuracy, and the moderations supporting that, is nothing but the kind of dishonest bullshit you right wingers are trying to use to try to pretend left media is even remotely as dishonest as the right.
Forwarding doesn't count. That wasn't their current policy. The original may have lacked them trying to claim forwarding does count, and if that's enough to say it was wrong, take a good hard look at the state of media bias and the right wing propaganda that is leading you people to attack this truth. It wasn't wrong.
Accuracy in reporting is more than just repeating something. Is it really accurate to report that "Slashdot user fafalone is a pedophile" followed hours or days later by a correction "The article has been updated to clarify the pedophile charge was made by somebody"? I doubt you would you just happily say "Of course their story was balls-on accurate, they have no obligation to confirm what they are reporting before reporting it".
As for "dishonest bullshit you right wingers blah blah", you don't know me or
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Ever heard of "lying through omission" ? Yes, biased news is as bad as fake news.
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Used to be that there'd be a couple of newspapers in town, each proudly wearing its bias and most everyone aware of the bias. This was repeated to a large extend when radio and TV showed up on the scene.
Now, they're all owned by the same couple of companies, all pushing mostly the same agenda and just pretending bias.
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As the saying goes (Score:1)
Also, am I the only one who's sick and tired of hearing mainstream media called "liberal biased" when that same media falls in line with their corporate masters 99% of the time (occasionally supporting Gay rights and Abortion rights as if doing so excuses the 24/7 pro-corporate coverage on economics)?
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Also, am I the only one who's sick and tired of hearing mainstream media called "liberal biased"
Yes. The people who say that shit do NOT mean conservative and liberal as they are written in the dictionary, where liberals want government to control business but stay out of your personal lives, and conservatives want government to stay out of business, but all up in your personal business. (They, of course, think that government could never be up in their personal business, because they are stupid.) They actually mean "hippies" when they say "liberals"
No, that's not what I see from the media (Score:2)
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... is how The Verge is simply a Democrat mouthpiece that doesn't actually do any kind of Journalism.
Also INB4 "But muh Fox news". Yes, the state of reporting and journalism in the country is absolutely atrocious and going downhill.
Or, more correctly, the current Trump/Republican administration is simply a mouthpiece for Fox "News". ...)
(Trump himself has mentioned his daily scrum meetings with Sean Hannity
Reading is hard! (Score:2)
From the very next section of the same article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."[14]
On August 13, 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.[15][16][17][18]
Um... did the submitter read what they wrote? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Um... did the submitter read what they wrote? (Score:4, Insightful)
It costs money to process. So the alternative is that the rest of us pay to process your complaint. I'm sure your complaint is serious, but I'll bet the FCC spends lots of resources (tax dollars) investigating stupid complaints.
So what? That's the cost of doing business. Hell, for a taxpayer-funded organization, it's the justification of their existence.
And besides, what you're implying should be reflected in cost reductions and ultimately budget cuts for the FCC. As a seasoned US taxpayer, I can fucking promise you neither of those will happen, so what exactly was the point of this exercise other than creating revenue streams and ensuring the common man cannot afford to actually use the tools their taxes are (allegedly) paying for?
Re:Um... did the submitter read what they wrote? (Score:4, Funny)
So basically, the next time comcast starts fucking with me and I need to file a complaint, unless I want to pony up 225 clams, I might as well print it out, stick it up my ass, and set one end on fire. What good is the FCC now anyway?
They Might Be Giants. (Score:2)
I occured to me (Score:2)
I'm not sure where we go from here. Does subby not RTFH (Read the f****** Headline)? And even if we can achieve that, what then?
Pai Making Government More Useless... Again (Score:3, Informative)
Most working class people cannot afford to throw $200+ toward a complaint that might help them deal with a big business---if there is a legal basis for intervention, which, of course, they have no way of knowing without consulting a lawyer.
A decent chunk of people couldn't throw $200+ toward a complaint even if it would definitely result in action.
If the FCC is supposed to oversee the telecom industry in the interest of the public, then this is a great way to slough off one of its fundamental responsibilities. Removing consumer protections often provokes outrage, so apparently the new plan is to simply render the protections meaningless or difficult to invoke.
Has anyone started a pool on how much Pai gets paid by Verizon when he's hired after stepping down from the FCC? I want in on that action.
Re:Pai Making Government More Useless... Again (Score:5, Interesting)
A decent chunk of people couldn't throw $200+ toward a complaint even if it would definitely result in action.
Yeah... it shouldn't cost a net $200 to complain.... Or if it does cost $200; the FCC should pay a BOUNTY to citizens raising a complaint unless it is investigated and found to not have merit. For example: Pay $200 to complain, and if investigation shows the complaint is valid, then the company should be fined or required to pay a settlement plus the investigative, administrative and FCC legal costs, and the complainer(s) that resulted in that investigation receive a payment of 2% of the resulting fine or settlement, but no less than $1000 for a founded complaint.
You've got it all wrong (Score:3)
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$200 bet for a minimum $1000 return is pretty good
For a return the complaint has to result in an investigation finding material support evidencing a substantial violation that is either large in financial impact or affects many more people than the complainant --- the $$$ is some compensation for the trouble they have suffered or payment for doing sufficient work to move the violation to the attention to the FCC - As a result, for a chance of being paid, they should require some evidence or detailed
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Most working class people cannot afford to throw $200+ toward a complaint that might help them deal with a big business---if there is a legal basis for intervention, which, of course, they have no way of knowing without consulting a lawyer.
The way the Republican leaders see it is, if you've been wronged by a business, you should sue them. The obvious problem with this mentality is that it creates a society where only the wealthy have consumer protection.
If you've ever had the unfortunate experiences of dealing with the types of businesses which cater to low-income people (buy-here-pay-here car dealers, payday loan brokers, prepaid phone dealers, etc.), it becomes readily apparent why government enforcement of consumer protection laws is nece
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No, now a days the end user agreements that you have to agree to say no suing. You have to go through arbitration now. Don't worry, they swear that the arbitrator they hired isn't biased.
Clarification (Score:4, Funny)
If you read the article and the rebuttal statements from the FCC, it appears this is the new policy:
You will still be able to file an "informal" complaint, but those are the ones that just get forwarded to the spam folder at the company you're complaining about and ignored entirely by the FCC.
However, if you want to file a formal complaint to the FCC, you will be required to pay $225 at the time you file your complaint, which will then be forwarded to the spam folder at the FCC before being completely ignored.
If you want to form a complaint that won't be ignored by the FCC, you must be a registered lobbyist for the telecom industry, be a member of a Trump Country Club, or god you must be new here, get the fuck out before we call security.
Could be worse (Score:3)
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They shouldn't have, NDS was so much better than Active Directory, at least up through 4.11.
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FCC will always be a political footbal (Score:1)
Regulatory (see executive in the vast majority of cases) agencies will always be used politically in this way. The general idea is this:
Contrary to the constant attributions to Hitler and racists, conservatives will always look to shrink the size of government and the associated costs. Regulatory agencies, not established or checked by congress due to their very nature of being birthed by the executive (IRS, FBI, EPA, ICE etc etc) are almost entirely at the mercy of the currently sitting executive. This mea
Probably a good thing (Score:2)
I've had to contact the FCC a few times, and all it did was increase my frustration at the situation at hand. A lot of time filling out forms, with zero impact on anything.
$225 is sufficient to keep me from hoping that they just might actually be effective the next time around.
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The bottom line is that ... (Score:2)
Either way, the FCC will still ignore individual informal complaints for free and ignore individual formal complaints for $250.
(The Citizens United ruling makes corporations "people" but sadly, contrary to the Declaration of Independence, apparently not all people are created equal in the eyes of our various governmental agencies and representatives.)
So wait a second... (Score:3, Insightful)
...you're suggesting that congresspeople of the opposition party may have "misunderstood" (accidentally or deliberately) and then used that "mistaken" information to gin up outrage?
Hm. Can't imagine that happening in America.
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It's only a misunderstanding if you stop at the headline and don't manage to read the summary.
Fed preemption of action against phone spammers (Score:4, Insightful)
What bugs me is that the federal law preempts civil suits against the likes of phone spammers, those who ignore the do-not-call list, etc.
My family has our land lines on the do-not-call list and yet is running a higher ratio of junk to real calls than junk to real snail mail, and the robocallers are starting to show up on our cellphones (which is supposedly strictly a no-no).
If we could civil-sue the offenders (say, in small-claims court) for damages in the form of the cost of our time and resources in receiving those calls, we could recover at least some of our losses, while the offenders might think twice about re-offending. But we can't, because the federal government preempted such suits, and then doesn't take effective action against the offenders, so the level of offence, and resulting damage, explodes.
It seems to me that such preemption might constitute a "taking" under the Fifth Amendment (for the alleged "public purpose" of avoiding crippling legitimate businesses with bogus suits from disgruntled customers when they make a legitimate phone contact).
If so, the Fed owes us all a lot of money.
Anyone up for running a class-action to recover that? B-)
Verizon called me the next day... (Score:1)
No, the FCC is forcing consumers to pay $225... (Score:2)
The FCC said in a statement that the lawmakers had misunderstood the proposal. "The item would not change the Commission's handling of informal complaints," the agency said.
And if there's one thing the Pai FCC is known for, it's telling the truth.
Color me surprised (Score:1)