Everyone has gotten a call from a telemarketer. Either some overly friendly person who catches you off-guard by greeting you like a friend or with one of those awful pre-recorded messages. Wisconsin is taking a stand against telemarketers who have the audacity to call your cell phone.
From the Wisconsin State Journal
Cell phone protection an easy call
Telemarketers are starting to do something worse than annoying people with unwanted calls at dinner time.
They're starting to cost people in Wisconsin money by calling us on our mobile phones.
They can do this even to state residents who register their phone numbers with the state's popular no-call list. The list only protects land-line phones. It doesn't apply to mobile phones.
The Wisconsin Senate unanimously voted Tuesday to close this loophole in the law. Now the Assembly needs to quickly approve and send Senate Bill 99 to the governor before adjourning this spring.
Two problems with the bill have been fixed. There 's no excuse for not adopting this sensible restriction now.
The bill would boost the maximum fine from $100 to $1,000 for telemarketers who intentionally call people whose numbers are on the no-call list.
That 's a reasonable increase to discourage violations by large telemarketing firms. The bill originally sought to increase the maximum penalty to $10,000 per instance, which seemed excessive. Small businesses had legitimately worried that an isolated, unintentional slipup could cost them thousands of dollars.
This bill is huge. Technically, cell phones are not covered by the National Do Not Call Registry because they shouldn't need to be. Cell phones are supposed to be covered under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). However, for some reason or another, I'm sure we've all received at least one telemarketing call on our cell. The Wisconsin bill, should it survive and become a law, would be an amazing way of telling companies who willfully violate the law "Hey, you broke the law and you're going to pay for it." Literally. While there's a part of me that wants the penalty to stick at $10,000 I understand and agree with the logic behind setting it at $1,000. Makes total sense.
TCPA is supposed to protect consumers from incurring costs as a result of unsolicited marketing. We even talked about it right here in regards to the dreaded marketing text message. In some situations advertising is ok, or even expected. The most obvious is Television and Radio. You're getting the service for free and it needs to be financed somehow. The cell phone is the exact opposite. We pay, some of us through the nose, for our cellular phones and I don't think that it's out of line to expect a little control over who can call us.
The only part of the story that disgusts me is that it's even necessary. Federal law prohibits telemarketing calls to cellular phones. The fact that these people have the outright audacity to fly in the face of the law is amazing. Maybe we (I'm including myself here) need to be more vigilant in reporting these criminals (people who break the law are criminals, right?) we can start to flood the FCC with complaints. And I'm not saying this because I want to cause the FCC a lot of grief. Do I think that they overreact sometimes? Sure. Do I think that the TCPA is only effective if violations are reported? Totally. If the FCC sees an enormous influx of complaints they may pull a Wisconsin and set forth very clear and deterring penalties. If we aren't reporting these violations then the FCC has no way of knowing how big the problem is.
Right here, right now, let's take a stand. Let's commit, right now, to report every violation to the FCC.
You can file a complaint right here.
If it's bad enough that you're seeking financial restitution, click here for more information on how to do that.
There's help out there. Let's ask for it.
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