Judge awards nearly $230,000 to woman who got 153 robocalls

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Associated Press

By Larry Neumeister, Associated Press
4 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) -- It wasn't a robocall, but a federal judge left a message anyway for companies Tuesday when he awarded nearly $230,000 to a Texas woman, finding that a cable company crossed the line when it harassed her with 153 robocalls even after she complained about the wrong numbers.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan ordered Time Warner Cable Inc. to make the $229,500 payment to Araceli King of Irving, Texas, citing the New York-based company's "particularly egregious" behavior as it violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. ... King sued last year, saying she had repeatedly asked the company to stop making the calls. ... Susan Leepson, a Time Warner spokeswoman, said the company is reviewing its options and determining how to proceed.

Hellerstein said he tripled the $1,500 penalty for each call because Time Warner's actions were "particularly egregious" since it continued making the calls even after King complained in a seven-minute phone conversation in October 2013 with a company representative that the calls to her phone were apparently meant for a customer she did not know. The judge noted that 74 of the calls were made after Time Warner received a copy of King's lawsuit in March 2014.

The company's "recurring theme" in its legal arguments was that it was an unwitting victim of an unpredictable federal law that was not intended to turn an innocuous call to a wrong number into large damages, the judge said.

Read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/judge-awards-nearly-230-000-003251647.html#

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Granted, this is not as important as all the stock and computer brouhahas going on today, but there is some satisfaction to be had, albeit vicariously, in this.

Just to be clear, it wasn't "an innocuous call to a wrong number;" it was 153 calls to a wrong number. Also, I suspect the federal law was not all that "unpredictable."

Full disclosure: I own a few shares of Time Warner Cable, but if you think I have any sympathy for the company, guess again.

[Lurks Often]

1. Good. I wish a judge would do the same to the power washing guy

I keep getting automated calls from.

[lark]

2. Yeah, I want the timeshare people to go down too.

Don't know why the f** they think I own a timeshare, but I've been getting these calls to help me sell my non-existent timeshare for years. I'll complain mightily and the calls will stop for awhile, but they always come back. Grrrrr.

[Stevepol]

22. I had the same problem for years.

Somehow my telephone number was associated with some restaurant (non-existent I think since the address when I checked was almost certainly not a restaurant at least incurrent times). I got calls from all over the country for several years from small business loan companies, cash register companies, every conceivable company associated with small restaurants. I tried everything I could to get the calls to stop. I got on average I suppose 5 calls a week. After several years, I just CHANGED MY PHONE NUMBER.

This worked. I am not plagued with the calls but I pity the next person that gets my old phone number.

[Shrike47]

3. Write him, call him, tell him to stop. Then sue him.

[Person 2713]

7. A written request to cease is important yes

[Lurks Often]

10. No one has been able to track him down

although I haven't gotten a call in a while. Maybe someone found him, sued him and he is hopefully broke now. If I'm really lucky he pulled his sovereign citizen shtick on a judge and is in jail on contempt charges.

I hate the telemarketing/fund raising industry.

[lonestarnot]

4. Many call for Helen over here. Helen somebody er other, I gave her a last name I could remember as

her actual last name is odd, so yeah, Helen Black. She looks like hell in black too. Could a judge give me some dough for that?

[Amishman]

5. good! I hope they serve as an example

When I got a new phone number I was harassed for months by the same companies seeking the person who had my number previously. Even after I explained repeatedly that I was not the person they were looking for, they kept calling almost daily. After seeing this, I wish I had recorded calls and kept records.

After six months the calls changed from companies to collection agencies. Amazingly the collection agencies got the idea after a call or two.

[merrily]

6. Hell, I've gotten hundreds more than that from "Bridget," who wants to assure me that there's

nothing wrong with my credit card account, but she can lend me money to pay it off anyway and some guy from Microsoft" who wants to assure me that something is very wrong with my computer, but he can fix it if I allow him to take control of it. The guy form "Microsoft" is not a robo call, but he may as well be.

The credit card calls alone have been coming once every week day for about five years now.

Apparently, the NSA knows everything about our phone calls, except who makes these calls.

[Archae]

27. "Bridget" or "Heather"

Now their caller ID is a "survey."

[merrily]

28. "Bridget" has had two other names over the years. I think the last one was Carmen.

Don't remember the original name at all.

The FTC called it/her "Public Enemy No. 1." Yet, I don't think they do a thing to track down the perps.

[valerief]

8. Every few weeks I'd get calls that would ring every five minutes for hours on end.

Can't remember what the caller id said, but I didn't answer them. Finally, I got someone at Verizon who told me to go online and check off a setting that said I didn't want sales calls from them. The harassing calls stopped. I suffered months and months of this (actually it stopped for a few months one year but then started up again).

Do people actually answer their phones anymore? I only do when I know who's calling. The marketing abuse that's been placed on us by harassing corporate personhoods is enough to drive us mad.

[PoliticAverse]

9. If they don't pay can she cut off their cable? n/t

[Triana]

11. I've been trying nomorobo

https://www.nomorobo.com/

So far, except for the India shits spoofing Caller ID, it's stopped robocalls to my phones.

Scammers from India like to spoof caller ID - you get a Caller ID of '1' or '6759' or some such. NEVER EVER answer such calls. You can't block them because they are not a "legitimate" number. Just don't pick up.

[Liberalagogo]

14. OMG

THANK YOU!

Easy sign, worked perfectly and it's FREE!!!

My AT&T only let's me block 20 numbers and I've been having to cycle through them. Plus I have to call AT&T and have them block the 11 and 12 digit numbers, because you can't on the website, only 10 digit.

[Triana]

15. YVW.

[Hotler]

17. It says it will not work on....

traditional analog land lines. What good is it then.

[thesquanderer]

19. Pretty soon, no one will have traditional analog land lines

As the lines fail, they're not being repaired.

Which leads to things like this...

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/verizon-let-us-install-fiber-or-well-shut-off-your-phone-service/

[question everything]

24. "Unfurtunately, nomorobo is not available for traditional land line at this time"

Oh well.

[greyl]

29. This call blocker device does, and works well:

CPR Call Blocker V202 - Caller Display - 1200 Number Capacity

You can either hit the red button to block an incoming caller forever, or block entire ranges of numbers before they call. We're up to 44 blocked numbers since January(in addition to the max 30 of our Panasonic handsets).

[Triana]

30. Probably your only option if you have a landline. n/t

[csziggy]

12. I wish I had been able to contact T-Mobile about their calls

Maybe then I could have sued to get money from them. They kept calling my number dunning some customer of theirs with a name I did not know. The calls came two to three times a week for a couple of months - before we had caller ID so I couldn't screen my calls.

The problem was the ONLY way to contact T-Mobile and speak to a human was if you had a customer number. I've never done business with T-Mobile - and NEVER will - so I could not contact any human other than their local sales people who did not have a way to contact their billing department. There was no way to tell them that they were using an incorrect number for their collection calls.

After submitting a complaint with the Florida Consumer Services who tried to weasle out of any responsibility I finally got my complaint brought to the attention of T-Mobile. I got a letter of apology from their president and a promise they wouldn't call me again. Despite my request they did NOT promise to put in a way for a non-customer to let them know they had the wrong number for their collection calls.

The next week after I got the letter, I received a call from the T-Mobile Sales Department offering me a discount on their service. I told the nice lady that I had in my hand that letter from their president PROMISING that I would never get another call from T-Mobile and that she should add my number to their never-ever-ever call list. I haven't heard from T-Mobile since.

At $1500 per call, I could have picked up a few bucks - but I had never been able to tell them to stop calling me.

[The2ndWheel]

13. For $230,000

They can put me on a lot of lists I don't want to be on. They can call me 300 unwanted times. Hell, make it 600. That's still $380 per call. I won't complain about complaining. Well, I'll complain, obviously, but not, you know, complain complain. They can put me on hold for an hour, just to talk to a representative for another hour, only to not get it right. Which I will then call about again, and be put an hold for another hour.

Time on this planet is short, but that's a small price for $230,000.

[question everything]

16. Was it the cable company calling her

or is her phone service provided by the cable company?

This is one reason why I don't "bundle" TV, Internet and phone service. The phone service is a stand alone.

And... in the evening, when everyone is at home we don't even answer up the call. Never anyone leaves a message. Actually, I think that in the evening there are solicitations for worthy causes, no doubt, still...

During the day, unless someone greets me personally, but instead starts with "Congratulations!" or "Hello Senior!" or "this is Tom from the shipping department" or "Carmen from credit cards.." I hang up after the first word.

[SoapBox]

18. Now...how do we stop the endless political calls.

THAT makes us nuts! And the numbers are all different...some are robo and some are probably poor volunteers using cell phones.

Has anyone reregistered and not given a correct phone?

That's some more shit that I want stopped.

[truedelphi]

26. The political calls are not something that can be stopped.

Political calls are exempt from the Do Not call registry.


I think you can leave the space where it asks for a phone number totally blank on your voter registration, but should you offer up your phone number, that number is at the County Registrar of Voters, then you will be called.

[McCamy Taylor]

20. Thats $2000 per call.

[DFW]

21. We got telephone-terrorized when we moved into our house in Germany

We received between two and fifteen calls a day from cosmetic shops all around Europe because some huge perfume wholesaler was too lazy to send out a mass mailing to their customers that their ordering number (our new number, as we found out) was no longer valid. At all hours of the day and night, our private line was clogged with perfume retailers, mostly in Germany, but also in Italy and other places, looking to order this or that perfume from us. We sent the wholesaler constant requests that they send out the change to their customers. They couldn't be bothered.

So, we finally told everyone calling us for perfume that there was no such company as far as we knew, and certainly not at this number, and that no perfume could be ordered from us (I was complimented on my Italian, though). Finally, that did the trick. We got an angry call from the perfume wholesaler demanding we stop telling people they didn't exist as far as we knew. It was hurting their business and they were losing orders.

Boo hoo.

We told them we had never heard of them (true enough) except though this telephone terror we had been experiencing for the last year. We told them (again) that if they didn't send out a mass mailing/phone action, asking for acknowledgement of their new phone contact, that we would continue to tell people terrorizing us 10+ times a day that no such company existed at this number, and we had no idea if they were still in business. We told them that we had endured a year of nerve-wracking telephone terror, and they could be happy we didn't sue them when the calls had continued despite our plea for them to do something about it. They must have gotten the hint, because the calls soon stopped, and our phone eventually only rang with calls for us. If money was the only language they understood, well, I speak that, too.

[Ron Obvious]

23. Damn, I got more than that just from Dish Network

They keep calling, emailing, sending letters saying they want us back.

Honestly, if this were a real relationship, I could have them charged with stalking.

[SunSeeker]

25. K & R