Time Warner Cable owes $229,500 to woman it would not stop calling

Reuters ^ | 7-7-2015 | Jonathan Stempel

[Citizen Zed]

Many people dislike receiving robocalls. Araceli King disliked receiving 153 of them from a single company.

Time Warner Cable Inc must pay the insurance claims specialist $229,500 for placing 153 automated calls meant for someone else to her cellphone in less than a year, even after she told it to stop, a Manhattan federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

King, of Irving, Texas, accused Time Warner Cable of harassing her by leaving messages for Luiz Perez, who once held her cellphone number, even after she made clear who she was in a seven-minute discussion with a company representative.

The calls were made through an "interactive voice response" system meant for customers who were late paying bills.

Time Warner Cable countered that it was not liable to King under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law meant to curb robocall and telemarketing abuses, because it believed it was calling Perez, who had consented to the calls.

But in awarding triple damages of $1,500 per call for willfully violating that law, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said "a responsible business" would have tried harder to find Perez and address the problem.

He also said 74 of the calls had been placed after King sued in March 2014, and that it was "incredible" to believe Time Warner Cable when it said it still did not know she objected.

[cva66snipe]

Thanks. For posting the link. I have the recording thankfully. I can’t go on youtube from my house. 52 Kbps service :>{

[Up Yours Marxists]

You could just a say: “keep talking” for a few minutes, followed up with: “I love the sound of your sexy voice. I know I’m in the registry for prior offenders, but I just GOTTA met you! Would you mind if I got your person cell phone number?”

Works for me when the AARP calls me begging for money.

[ChildOfThe60s]

I just block them all. I don’t have the time to putz around with them.

Again, my capabilities for filtering on the VOIP are just short of amazing. Their tech support has been helpful showing me some tricks with filtering. And it’s been much more stable (5 years) than my previous ATT traditional land line. $19.95 a month with more features than ATT had for almost 4 times that cost.

I won’t advertise here. Anyone interested in checking it out, PM me and I’ll give you the provider’s link.

[Sarah Barracuda]

I have T-Mobile and an old Samsung Galaxy S phone(Planning on upgrading eventually since my phone is such garbage it cant even maintain a charge anymore) I get phone calls all the time on my cell phone from numbers I dont recognize I just dont answer it but how can I block the numbers?

[Alex Murphy]

 Zed When I bought a new phone from Verizon, it was CLEAR almost immediately that the phone number was “foreclosed” on....lol. Every single call was from some creditor and it was ANNOYING........SO ANNOYING.....until one day I said, I am going to screw with them. And I acted like I was the guy....his name was Bruce and I became Bruce with the creditors saying of course I will send you money or gave a false credit card number or whatever I could do to make their lives MISERABLE. I also made up a sob story to waste their time.

I've done similar things in order to find out who the debtor (who had the number previously) is. I then hunted down said debtor's contact info myself (to quote the movie Sneakers , "it's amazing what fifty bucks will get you at the county recorders office"), and provide that info back to the creditor the next time they mistakenly contact me.

[Tenacious 1]

Works for me when the AARP calls me begging for money.

lol. The first call I got from AARP, I was 20 something. Over the years I tried to explain it to them. Then I cancelled my membership several times. Then they sent me some gifts? I'm in my 40s now and routinely tell them (when they call) how ashamed I am of them as a 20 year member of AARP. I tell them they have turned me into an evil conservative.

I still think I'm a member. I don't know how more to take advantage of them.

[oldtech]

Last phone I got from Verizon I was getting phone calls from a bill collector. Found out I had been assigned a number that previously belonged to someone else,who was actually the person they were trying to contact. I even knew who the person was. We finally got that one straightened out,but only after a long talk.

[Dallas59]

I tell em I like their voice and to keep going...cause I need to make a fantasy come true...

[KoRn]

Right. My S5 also came with one on board, but I’ve found better ones available for download.

[ChildOfThe60s]

I’ll tell you how it’s done on my S4 tomorrow. Right now I’m on my way to bed.

[Sarah Barracuda]

Awesome no worries and thanks I appreciate it have a good night :-)

[Abby4116]

I use an android app called white pages ID. It even identifies what it suspects is spam and allows you to block. Works fine for me - free android app.

[Blood of Tyrants]

I hate robocalls. I asked for a insurance quote online in Aug 2012 and I am STILL getting calls about that.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

We still use a Comcast IP landline as part of our triple play package. I like the better sound quality compared to our Verizon service over our iPhones.

I was adding all the landline (which we've had for 30 years!) junk calls manually to our Panasonic cordless phone and to the Comcast call block black list. That was not effective or scalable, so some web research led me to NoMoRobo by Aaron Foss who won an FTC "challenge" with his system. You set it up to allow simultaneous ring on your home line and on the NMR system. It checks a crowd-sourced blacklist database and ends the telemarketer call after one ring if it finds a match. I turned the ringers off on all of our cordless handsets. That way I can hear the faint ring on the base station in the MBR and not have to suffer four handsets going off simultaneously. I usually see the light flash on the handset and can check the caller ID to see who's calling.

Now we can go three or four days without a junk call. When one slips through the NMR system, the calling number is logged on the Panasonic phone. I jump on NMR and add the number to the database (just takes a few seconds) so others won't be bugged. Apparently NMR does some validity checks before adding the number to the system so you can't add your Mother in Law.

I highly recommend NMR as an easy (and FREE) way to get control of the phone line you pay for.

[Citizen Zed]

Interesting.

[EternalVigilance]

For $229,500 they can call me as many times as they like.

[Organic Panic]

It has been five years with this cell phone number and I still get calls for the deadbeat that had it. Sometimes 5 a day. All debt collectors.

[cva66snipe]

Just curious did your area have an area code change about the time you got your phone? When that happens it messes up a lot of records and someone may have gotten a new area code but same 7 digit number close to the same area. The area code prefix would be the only change.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Since I don’t know which Galaxy S version you have & I am only familiar with my S4, go to youtube and do a search with this line:

galaxy S auto reject list

That will bring up “how to” set up auto reject & blocking for the different S versions.

After that do this search, still on youtube:

galaxy s do not disturb

“do not disturb” is a really handy function. Example: My is set to ignore all texts and phone calls between 9 pm and 7:45 am EXCEPT for ones I specifically white list. In this case my wife and daughter. All others go to voice mail. Never hear a thing.

[Sarah Barracuda]

The phone calls I get on my cell phone are from those I Guess computer generated phone numbers, they are not legit numbers, just numbers made so you think they are calling you from your town. For example, I get phone calls from 818, 310, and 213 area codes..all area codes in Los Angeles so I would think I should answer it but I dont since I dont recognize the number, not sure how to block numbers like that
This is my phone
https://support.t-mobile.com/community/phones-tablets-devices/android/samsung-galaxy-s-4g