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The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) is the primary law in the U.S. governing the conduct of telemarketers. Its primary regulator is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The TCPA restricts the use of dialers, prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages received by cell phones, and the use of fax machines. As such, debt collectors often find themselves restricted in the communication technology they can use, especially when the technology is not explicitly mentioned in the law. For example, until the FCC issued a declaratory ruling in 2008, the ARM industry was tacitly restricted from using autodialer technology to call mobile phones. Similarly, the use of text messaging is currently a legal gray area for debt collectors.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been very busy lately, of course. Most of its attention seems to be focused on various sectors of the consumer finance industry. But the agency did recently reveal its intention to return some focus to the debt collection industry.
A court recently ruled that calls to mobile phones must be done manually and not via any system with the capacity to make automated dials. The challenge itself is quite simple: How does an organization, charged with recovering debt from consumers, make enough “manual” phone calls to a growing mobile population to reach enough consumers to actually make any money?
It’s probably the most important balancing act a collection agency has to master: call volume, which can translate to increased profits, balanced against call compliance, which can drain a ledger sheet if ignored and put your agency’s reputation and existence at risk. Higher contact rate is the stat that, of course, every collection agency strives [...]
Over one-third of all debt collection complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) focus on so-called “repeat calls.” With most collections efforts requiring repeat outreach to the same contacts, it becomes imperative that organizations strategically manage the number of outreach attempts to debtors.
No matter how hard we try to comply with TCPA, we find ourselves battling it every day. Whether fighting a class action lawsuit, or fighting to get clarity over the broadness of language.
DialConnection, LLC, an international leader in providing contact center solutions, announces the release of its mobileComply solution.
Sometimes it seems like everything a debt collector does can be parsed as a potential violation of some consumer statute, at least enough so to bring a civil action. Even when it appears the tide of precedent-setting court cases is turning in favor of the ARM industry, there are decisions that bring collection professionals back to reality.
Oh good! An article that’s going to lay out how CFPB exams will change the debt collection industry. You guys! We’ve been waiting for this! (Spoiler Alert: Objects in the American Banker headline may appear more helpful than they are. Oh, and the FTC’s unverified data rears its ugly head. And they turn to a terrific representative of the collection industry for some quotes.) I bet you can’t WAIT to jump right in!
The proliferation of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation against the debt industry continues unabated. Damage awards and settlements in TCPA cases costing debt collectors hundreds of thousands — and even millions — of dollars are a common occurrence. The latest development regarding the TCPA is sobering: a Federal Court found a debt collector liable for TCPA violations where some of the calls to a consumer’s mobile phone were made in dialer “preview” mode and an individual collector “clicked” on the number to dial it.
A federal judge in Florida Tuesday granted class certification to a case brought by a consumer against a medical debt collection agency over a message left in the plaintiff’s voicemail. The consumer is seeking damages under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
The case also names the original creditor, a hospital in this case, citing vicarious liability under the TCPA.