Time Warner Cable must pay $229,500 to Texas woman it robocalled 153 times

[TheIrishman]

Time Warner Cable must pay $229,500 to Texas woman it robocalled 153 times

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/08/time-warner-cable-must-pay-229500-to-texas-woman-it-robocalled-153-times

<< 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. >>

[bryant.coleman]

$229,500 for making 153 robocalls? I accept that the fault is with the Time Warner Cable. People get irritated, when they receive calls which are meant for someone else. But the verdict seems to be too harsh. It would have been OK if they were told to pay 10K or 20K. But 230K for making a few robocalls?

[Possum577]

I wonder if she ever put the number on the do not call registry, I do that and the people never call back. These cable companies are the worst, they're just a utility yet they act like a media company, entitled to do whatever they want. DirecTV and Comcast are bad too. They lie, lie, lie until someone calls them out. I had to threaten a class action lawsuit for some BS DirecTV was pulling on me, as soon as I said the words "class action lawsuit" they let me out of my contract without any additional hassle or fee - as they should have to begin with.

Cut the cable and go a la carte with Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, etc!

[Lauda]

$229,500 for making 153 robocalls? I accept that the fault is with the Time Warner Cable. People get irritated, when they receive calls which are meant for someone else. But the verdict seems to be too harsh. It would have been OK if they were told to pay 10K or 20K. But 230K for making a few robocalls?

Actually I would ask for even more. They are a multi-billion dollar company and they should be punished accordingly. These sentences should definitely scale properly.
That's not a few calls. A few calls would be 4-5, not 153. If you have read everything correctly, the woman told them to stop and yet they kept annoying her.

Cable companies won't last too long, as it is already time to switch from cable to the internet.

[Lethn]

Cut the cable and go a la carte with Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, etc!

That goes double for Netflix since they may well be signing up Top Gear in the next few weeks

[Bitcoiner2015]

They can call me 153 times if I get $229,500 afterwards, in fact that is an open offer to any company out there!

[Spendulus]

$229,500 for making 153 robocalls? I accept that the fault is with the Time Warner Cable. People get irritated, when they receive calls which are meant for someone else. But the verdict seems to be too harsh. It would have been OK if they were told to pay 10K or 20K. But 230K for making a few robocalls?

It's a Texas law making  "junk robocalls" that dates back I believe to the 1980s.  $1500 per illegal call.  This was later trumped by a similar Federal law, but the idea remained the same.  If anything the Federal law gave more rights to those using robocalls and the frequency of abusive calls went up.

Actually there is "everything right" about the court decision, since the very point is to stop nuisance and annoying calls to mobile phones, for which the owner of the phone is usually charged.

[lucaspm98]

While that's an insane amount for a small nuisance, compared to the ridiculous number of annoying robocalls people do not sue about the amount is nothing.

[jaysabi]

Time Warner has no defense for this. They were told to stop because they were calling the wrong person; they did not. They were then sued for not stopping; they still did not stop calling. Time Warner had $2 billion in profits on $22 billion in revenue last year. $229k isn't even enough to make them sorry.

[Tusk]

Yea, she was cyberbullied I agree they should pay more attention to this type of harassment.

[TheButterZone]

But in awarding triple damages of $1,500 per call for wilfully violating that law, US 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.

“Defendant harassed plaintiff with robocalls until she had to resort to a lawsuit to make the calls stop, and even then TWC could not be bothered to update the information in its IVR system,” Hellerstein wrote.

The last 74 calls, he added, were “particularly egregious violations of the TCPA and indicate that TWC simply did not take this lawsuit seriously.”

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.