Cold-calling May Come at a High Price
In November 06, the Associated Press published an article with the headline “FTC Hits Telemarketers With $500k Fines” about mortgage company telemarketing. Apparently two Maryland-based companies were fined up to $500,000 to settle charges by the FTC that they called people on the Federal Do-not-call registry. What I found interesting was that the companies were also fined for “failing to pay to access the registry, as telemarketers are required to do”.
Since the DNC registry went into effect in October 2003, the FTC has investigated and brought charges in 29 cases, fifteen of them in the past 6 months. According to the article, FTC officials say, “this doesn’t represent a new crackdown”. My opinion? Mortgage lenders are easy to kick right now between the daily news on mortgage fraud, company closures and scandals at Fannie Mae.
In the most recent case, the FTC levied a fine of $426,782 against USA Home Loans although the company was only required to pay $35,000 of the fine with the remainder being suspended by the FTC. According to agency officials, this is sometimes done when companies do not appear able to pay the entire fine. In this specific case, the other company involved was USA First Investment Group who shared both a business address and company directors with USA Home Loans. USA First Investment is primarily a telemarketing company. They agreed to pay a civil penalty of over $85,000.
According to the filed complaint, USA First Investment Group purchased “leads” from a 3rd party company. What is unclear either from the AP article or the FTC’s website is if USA First Investment was duped into believing that the lists had been pre-scrubbed through the DNC list. Either way, that doesn’t absolve them of the responsibility to double check that information.
These companies made 2 mistakes that cost them over $100,000 in penalties and fines:
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They purchased leads and did not check the phone numbers against the federal do-not-call list
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They did not register either company with the federal do-not-call registry including ALL area codes the company would make a telemarketing call to
For more information on this case:
         FTC Complaint
         Details of Settlement
For more information on the Federal do-not-call registry:
        Telemarketers AND service providers click here
         Consumers interested in registering their phone number click here