A hoax has been floating around that pops up from time to time on the internet and elsewhere that claims the following. Obviously Donna Vestre owns or works at South Coast Revenue. Her message was posted to a newsgroup devoted to the collections industry yesterday but didn't show up until this morning because the group is heavily moderated to keep out spam and unwelcome postings. Donna probably got the supposed information from a spam email at home or at work. This hoax makes the rounds every year or so. Large numbers of people believe it implicitly and then spread it themselves. It was originally circulated several years ago with a virus attached but the hoax has outlived the virus and still keeps circulating. These hoaxes never seem to die. Another one that is still seen from time to time is the Dave Rhodes hoax. The Dave Rhodes hoax claims that if you send money (usually $5) to the name at the top of the list, remove the name at the bottom of the list and replace it with your name and send it to a few hundred people you will become rich overnight as people repeat the scam over and over again. The hoax starts off with a yarn about Dave Rhodes who was flat broke and in deep financial trouble. Dave sent the letter to 5 or 10 people who sent it to ..... .......... ............... and now he drives a new Lincoln Continental and lives a life of luxury. If you will but follow the instructions you will soon be wealthy. I got a letter in the mail years ago which came from Columbia. It was hand written in Spanish and claimed that if you sent the person at the top a dime you would become rich and if you broke the chain a demon would haunt you for the rest of your life. It never ends.
Sounds like a hoax. Several years ago, some of the cell phone companies were talking about publishing directories, but it quickly became clear their users would dump them if they did. It remains to be seen how appreciative users will be if the cell phone companies proceed to feed advertizing to their phones like they are talking about. There is probably no harm in putting your cell phone number on the Do Not Call list, but it probably would not provide much protection against debt collector calls, assuming they could obtain your number from your credit reports or contacting your other creditors. Telemarketters were engaging in wholesale random (or sequential) number dialing, and even being unlisted might not have prevented you from receiving their calls. Since a large part of telemarketting calls involved deception or outright fraud, good riddance! Note that you can also block calls even from companies you do business with, as well as "charity" telemarketters, under the Telemarketting Sales Rule (TSR). They must maintain their own "Do Not Call" list. If the telemarketter gives you BS about the Do Not Call list not applying to them, a letter to their legal department usually gets a quick response. The remaining junk calls I am currently getting are from futures trading boiler-rooms, who apparently think that if they buy a list from someone else, allegedly screened to remove Do Not Call numbers even though that is false, they can avoid liability on a call or two. The sleaze never stops. It IS convenient knowing that I am talking to a criminal whenever I receive a call from anyone I am not doing business with. It helps set the proper tone.
Another debt collector replied to the thread. Here is what he had to say. "Ronald C. Smith" <rcsmith@midamericasolutions.com> wrote: None the less, I have all my cell phones and land phones listed on the do not call list. It's great knowing that they are, and having the confidence that telemarketers won't inadvertently become a nuisance due to a loophole somewhere. It is very easy to register online. ...Ron Smith Mid America Solutions, L.L.C. 2805 Catalina Drive Anderson IN 46012-4707
And then Mr. Smith's comment is followed up by another who gives some interesting information. Any telemarketer can get a do not call list if they purchase it. The do not call lists are going to be in effective with in the next year. The TM companies are buying them through a 3rd party dummy corporation and claiming they did not know very similar to money laundering. Highly illegal but it is done none the less He didn't care to provide any other information about himself as the others have.
Buying the list would show that you should have known the numbers called were on it, but at least you could show you had done part of what the law requires. Hiding buying of the list only helps to the extent you are claiming it was some mistake, but if you were doing consumer telemarketting, and not on file as buying the lists, you are pretty much nailed if FTC got enough complaints, since you wouldn't even have some defense of a bona fide error, you had clearly failed to do what the law said you were required to. You pretty much would have to keep below the radar and not cause too many consumer complaints to end up at the same regulatory agency. As you have suggested, they appear to be trying to launder their responsibility, and they hope, their liability, by claiming they got a cleaned list from someone else. That appears to be the game being played by the futures trading hucksters, who probably couldn't make a living without cold calling new high income consumers. Columbia House tried to continue telemarketting old customers too long after they quit. They got nailed.
There are boxes you can get that require a code to be entered to ring thru. No problem for actual people, since your message can even say what the code is, but all automated dialers are blocked, and if you put your caller id box on the line side, you still know they tried.
The funny part here is that all of the people commenting in that egroup are debt collectors. Debt collectors are specifically excluded from penalty under the telemarketing act. They don't have to pay any attention to it. Only telemarketers do. So why are they even worried about it?
Unless, maybe, they are offering you a new credit card to transfer an old debt to. That might cross the line from debt collection to telemarketting!
Yes, and that does happen from time to time. The courts have mostly ruled that if a debt collector offers such or some other supposedly easy method of payment but makes no actual demand for payment in the letter even though overshadowing might otherwise have taken place then no violation of FDCPA has occurred. The difference is making a simple offer and making direct and immediate demand for payment of money. Those kinds of offers are most usually offered by mail so the telecommunications act would not apply if by mail.
actually, though, there are parts of the TCPA that do apply to DC's in relation to cell phones... Thanks to Rozanne @ ACA for adding that little tidbit in their nice little magazine... For instance, if a DC calls a consumer via an automatic dialer on a cell phone, they're violating the TCPA for using an AD on a cell phone; in addition to 15 U.S.C. § 1692(f)(5) for causing charges to be incurred to a consumer without meaningful disclosure of the collection purpose (if their CID doesn't specifically show a collection purpose.) Rozanne was nice enough to confirm what I've been saying about 15 U.S.C. § 1692(f)(5) for the longest while.
Then there's the case where the courts ruled that just including an envelope for the consumer's convenience in their letter advising them that they were researching their validation request, was CCA because there is only one thing that that envelope would be convenient for the consumer to do; send them a check.
