The Broadcast Team has agreed to pay a $1 million fine to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice that it made tens of millions of illegal automated telemarketing calls.
The agencies allege that the Florida-based telemarketer’s automated phone dialing service called and then illegally hung up on more than 64 million people, and called more than a million numbers on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. To settle this action, The Broadcast Team and its two principals, Robert J. Tuttle and Mark S. Edwards, have agreed to a proposed court order that will prohibit them from making similar calls in the future, in addition to the $1 million fine.
The alleged actions violated the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule in the course of using “voice broadcasting” to call millions of U.S. consumers using automated dialers and prerecorded messages. The FTC alleged that when the calls were answered by people, instead of voice mail or answering machines, the telemarketer illegally ended the call or hung up after playing a recording. The TSR limits telemarketers’ use of prerecorded messages by requiring that calls answered by a person be connected to a live representative within two seconds. This restriction on “abandoning calls” by hanging up or playing a recording when someone answers applies to telemarketing calls to solicit sales of goods or services, and to calls from for-profit telemarketers soliciting charitable contributions.
According to the complaint, TBT caused more than 64 million calls to be abandoned in campaigns on behalf of debt management services-related companies. TBT also abandoned more than 250,000 calls delivering recordings soliciting ticket sales, and more than 200,000 calls delivering recordings soliciting charitable contributions. The complaint further alleges that TBT unlawfully called DNC-listed numbers and made calls without paying the required annual fee for access to DNC-registered phone numbers.
TBT had argued that the TSR did not apply to its delivery of prerecorded messages and should not apply to its plans to use prerecorded messages to solicit funds on behalf of a charity. But in a related case pending in the same court, the judge rejected those arguments last April.
Significance: It’s not known on what grounds the company argued that the TSR did not apply to its prerecorded messages, but in any event, the court has rejected its position. Marketing officers and in-house counsel should always take steps to ensure that the third-party telemarketers with whom they contract for services are in compliance with the myriad rules and regulations that apply to telemarketing campaigns.