The Challenges of TCPA Compliance for Collection Agencies
A Boston collection agency is being sued over alleged TCPA violations.
The plaintiff, Scott Bonarrigo (who is not related to Scott Baio, even though the first time I read the story I thought it was Scott Baio), claims that EOS CCA dialed his cell phone using an automatic dialer too many times, constituting an invasion of his privacy.
As The Patriot Ledger points out, “The lawsuit doesn’t provide many details about why EOS CCA was trying to contact Bonarrigo or how many times the company has tried to do so.”
Kevin Crick, Bonarrigo’s lawyer, closes out the story thusly: “I see this happening more frequently and I don’t necessarily think this is something where the law is making them go away. But one thing I’ve noticed is that more and more consumers are starting to learn about their rights with regard to the law.”
This aligns with what we’ve heard from many agencies: Collection agencies aren’t commiting egregious violations of the law. Instead, they’re getting caught in technical violations that carry hefty price tags. “Consumers can receive up to $500 per violation of the federal telecom law, or up to $1,500 if a judge agrees that the company knowingly disregarded the law,” the Ledger reported.
TCPA compliance is the topic of an upcoming Interactive Intelligence webinar in September (details to come), and an upcoming report from insideARM.com and attorney David Kaminski. We’d love to hear from you — what questions do you have, what suggestions can you make, is TCPA too much of a quagmire to deal with, or is it a calculated risk an agency has to make?
That is the reason we never talk to the consumer on the phone. The consumer must contact us by mail only.
Does bring a good question. There are a number of “hosted” dialer providers who have been advertising their cell phone scrubs to stay away from such issues. But I question how accurate they are.
I use to scrub using credit bureaus, but they are sooo expensive. Does anyone have experience on how accurate these “hosted call center platforms” are? Are they simply just determining cell phone based on the phone number prefixes or are they actually utilizing something a lot more accurate which accounts for ported numbers and such?
Each time i do ask a hosted solution provider, all they tell me is “it is very accurate”, but of course, NEVER give u details on whether or not they stay accurate as cell/land lines float back and forth on a daily basis. It’s not like they are on the hook if u get sued at a later point.
The Hosted Call Centers DO NOT have a very high accuracy rate. Most of them do not even lookup the number portablility (ported or reassigned phone number list database delegated by the FCC)
However, for collections, there is a service that provides 99.9% accurate real-time subscriber name information for TCPA compliance. Take a look to see how their services would help you…. I know of two very large collections firms that are using their services now:
http://www.mindwav.com