More than twenty years ago, Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) to protect consumers from receiving annoying, disrupting, and privacy invading robocalls to your cell phone without your consent. The American Bankers Association, the American Collectors Association, Consumer Bankers Association, and other industry groups are pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to gut the TCPA. Currently, robocalls (or texts) to cell phones are illegal unless the cell phone owner has provided consent. Repeated unauthorized calls and texts to a consumer’s cell phones not only invade your privacy, but also cost you money by using your precious minutes or limited text allowances.
Debt collection and banking industries want the FCC to allow “wrong party” robocalls to your cell phones, subjecting you, an innocent consumer, to intrusive calls and texts if a debt collector associates a phone number with the wrong person or a consumer obtains a phone number previously owned by someone else. Companies have the ability to use existing technology to determine whether cell phone numbers were transferred to new users, but rather than use it, they want the right to robocall wrong numbers without penalty.
As a member of The National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), I urge you to protect your rights and your privacy by signing this petition
to the FCC urging the FCC not to allow “wrong number” robocalls to cell phones.
Protecting consumers’ rights and our constitutional right of access to courts is a priority at Terrell • Hogan. The lawyers at Terrell • Hogan support the National Association of Consumer Advocates, a nationwide organization of attorneys who represent consumers victimized by fraudulent, abusive, and predatory business practices.
