TMCnews Featured Article

Ever since the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) became law, those who use the phone to prospect for customers have been on edge, and on alert. The law is a complicated one, but the gist of it is this: Companies can’t use an auto-dialer in an attempt to reach customers.

Still, many try, with attorneys parsing the law and technology looking for loopholes so their customers can continue to try to earn a living. It doesn’t always work out.

Case in point comes to us today via Tucson, Arizona, where the state attorney general, according to Tucson News, has filed a lawsuit against an Arizona telemarketing company accused of using an auto-dialer to call tens of thousands of numbers.

The AG's office charges that a company called Publishers Service Office auto-dialed some 48,000 calls a month to sell new or renewed magazine subscriptions. The AG also says the company alleges it had permission to charge customers for those subscriptions.

"This office will aggressively investigate telemarketing scams and hold individuals who defraud consumers responsible," Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in remarks about the charge.

In a post on Bloomberg (News - Alert) Legal, several attorneys weighed in on the TCPA and its ramifications.

“The Telephone Consumer Protection Act has become a juggernaut for class-action lawyers across the country,” the lawyers noted. “Fueled by uncapped statutory damages ranging from $500 to $1,500 per violation (the top end being reserved for ‘willful’ violations), as well as an increasingly expansive interpretation of the statute given by the Federal Communications Commission and some courts, TCPA lawsuits--particularly class actions--are on the rise.”

Tucson News says that according to the lawsuit, the Attorney General wants Publishers Service Office to pay back customers, along with giving up any profits they made. No dollar amount was cited in the story.