Bank Of America Must Pay Family $1 Million For 5 Years Of Unwanted Robocalls

[Newsjock]

Source: Consumerist

If you’ve got a problem paying your mortgage, the bank is allowed to call you about collecting that debt. But after you’ve repeatedly told the bank — verbally and in writing — to stop robocalling your cellphone, it should do so. And if a recent ruling by a federal court in Florida holds up, Bank of America will have to fork over more than $1 million to a couple who say the bank spent five years ignoring their demands for the calls to cease.

... The bank had tried to argue that it only made calls to the plaintiffs between Aug. 2007 and Sept. 2009, so the 4-year statute of limitations had expired. But the judge points out that the plaintiffs presented evidence — which the bank didn’t attempt to refute — showing that they had received multiple calls per month through the summer of 2014.

BofA claimed that its automated calling system doesn’t fall within the definition of a “automatic telephone dialing system” as described in the TCPA because it doesn’t just call numbers at random, but uses a specific list of numbers for calling. But the judge maintained that a machine isn’t exempted from TCPA regulations just because the numbers are programmed into it.

As for the bank’s argument that the husband had indeed given his consent for calls to his cellphone by using it on mortgage documents, the judge ruled that that consent was taken away by the multiple cease-and-desist letters sent by the plaintiffs. Since the complaint only deals with the robocalls made after that request was made, the bank can’t claim he gave his consent to some of the calls.

Read more: http://consumerist.com/2014/12/11/bank-of-america-must-pay-family-1-million-for-5-years-of-unwanted-robocalls/

[sunnystarr]

1. Love it Love it Love it (nt) and kickers

[NaturalHigh]

2. Cool.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. People can actually make money by confronting robocallers.

DU member Ms. Smiler, who may not be with us any longer ( had a bad stroke in Sept.)
has successfully gotten robo callers to pay her for violating the law when they called her business.
she and I discussed it often, because, back when faxes were used more, the same law applied and I learned how to take the offenders to Small Claims Court.
so we had that issue in common.
She would send a letter with dates and times of the illegal calls.

Obviously this worked if you know who is calling.

For other calls, like Rachel of Card Services, or that damn car warrentee recorded call, sending a letter to your state's Attorney General
will help get that office after them.
I have done that too, keeping a log of when they called.