First, make sure all your phone numbers are listed on the National Do Not Call Registry at www.donotcall.gov . Second, if you are serious about making telemarketers give you money and buy you things, search out and join social media groups of like-minded people, like on Facebook and so forth. In these social media forums, you can chat with people who will share tips and information with you. These are excellent resources. There are many good videos on YouTube about how to sue telemarketers for unlawful calls.
You need to be proficient with technology to sue telemarketers. If you are not comfortable with the use of computers, the internet, smartphones, or the making of simple notes or business records, stop reading now because you will not be good at suing telemarketers.
You will generally make more money suing telemarketers with an attorney than you will by writing demand letters to them on your own without an attorney. But before you consult with an attorney about prosecuting telemarketers for you for even more money, you really should do some basic due diligence on your own first to understand what suing telemarketers involves. What does this basic due diligence consist of? Join some social media groups of like-minded people who will share tips and information with you. Watch some YouTube videos about how to sue telemarketers for unlawful calls.
Know Which Calls to You Are Unlawful
Solicitations from companies you have an established relationship with are not unlawful phone calls, even if auto-dialers and pre-recorded messages are used. There are a few other limited exceptions, such as calls made for charities and political campaigns. But other than these few exceptions, it is flatly unlawful for someone to call your cell phone using an “auto-dialer.” It is also an unlawful phone call if you answer your phone only to be greeted by a pre-recorded message.
It is unlawful to make telephone solicitations to phone numbers that are listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. It is also a violation of the statutes for a telemarketer to fail or refuse to promptly and truthfully disclose who they are calling for during the telemarketing call itself. This is what actually makes almost 100% of all telemarketing calls unlawful: telemarketers are required by their employers to LIE to you—they will only give you fake names of who they are at first, and if you demand that they actually tell you THE TRUTH about who they are working for, they are then also trained to just hang up the phone on you.
Understand that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act states the fine the telemarketer owes you is $500 to $1500 PER VIOLATION of the statute. The fine is applied for each VIOLATION, not each “call”. There are usually multiple violations of the statutes in each telemarketing call you answer. So if you are going to sue a telemarketer, you need to pay attention to what you heard when you answered the call. Who did the caller say the sponsor of the call was? What product or service did the caller try to interest you in? Were you asked for sensitive financial information such as credit card numbers ? You want to be able to describe multiple violations of the statutes in each call.
Telephone solicitations that leave voice-mail messages are violations of the statutes. A text message counts as a phone call too. Even telemarketing calls you don’t answer count as “calls” that violate the statute — in other words, you can charge a telemarketer $500-$1500 even for their calls you did not answer. If you are fed up with telemarketing calls, you have probably had the experience of seeing the same or very similar phone numbers appear on your Caller ID, that you know are from telemarketers, so you don’t answer. If you are going to try to identify one of these callers so you can sue, you want to try to document even the calls you didn’t answer so you can make them PAY YOU EVEN MORE MONEY.
Identify the Business That is Responsible for the Call
How can you sue someone if you can’t identify or locate them?
To sue telemarketers for their unlawful harassment and make them give you money and buy you things, you will need to be ok with acting like “a cop”: like an investigator. It's also sort of like hunting or fishing—you have to catch them, which can take a little patience.
The most difficult part of suing a telemarketer is accurately identifying and locating them. Generally, the first live telemarketer you will be on the phone with is someone at the call center that is most directly responsible for the call. These people will only lie about who they are and where they are. They are systematically trained as part of their job to LIE. If they actually TELL THE TRUTH about who their employer is, they will be fired. They will never, ever tell you the truth about who they are, and if you start asking too many questions or the wrong questions, they will just hang up the phone on you. But if you indulge them by patiently listening to their little scripted sales pitch and don’t make them suspicious enough to hang up the phone on you, you can very often get transferred to the actual business that hired them to harass you. Then you might get somewhere. If you are too naïve or inexperienced in life to understand what this paragraph says, stop reading now because you will not be good at suing telemarketers.
There are a variety of ways to get the actual business to accurately identify themselves. After all, since you were transferred to them, they think they might actually be rewarded for their illegal conduct by talking you out of some money to buy something.
Getting the business you were transferred to then send you an email is a good way to identify the parties responsible for illegally harassing you, but receipt of an email isn’t absolutely necessary. Sometimes you can identify the business that is using illegal telemarketing by just talking to the sales staff enough and taking notes about what they say. Then with adequate research they can be identified. Maybe they were selling a unique product or wanted you to look at a specific website. See if they will agree to call you back at some later date and time, and then wait to be called by someone at their real, in-house phone number—not the number their third-party telemarketers used. Make notes of phone numbers used for telemarketing calls: subpoenas can uncover who phone numbers are truly assigned to.
Target Particular Callers and Document Your Evidence
Target particular callers that you believe have called you repeatedly and focus on identifying them or who they are calling for. How do you know the same callers have called repeatedly? Because the Caller ID number was always the same or similar for their calls, or you heard the same sales pitch in all their calls, you answered.
After targeting a particular repeat caller you think you have a chance of identifying, keep basic notes about the calls, including but not limited to the dates and times of the calls, who the caller said they were if you answered, and the Caller ID number the calls caused your phone to display. Call these Caller ID numbers back and make brief notes about what happened when you did. Was it a “spoofed” number, or could you actually reach a call center or telemarketer when you called back ?
Figure out if all the phone calls you answer show up on your phone bill. If the phone call is documented on your phone bill statement, very good. Most smartphones have call logs that show the date and time of even missed calls, including the number that showed up on your Caller ID. You can screenshot and save these call logs. These photos are excellent evidence.
If you are fed up with commercial activity that invades even your home and private life uninvited, such as junk emails and telemarketers who ignore the Do-Not-Call Registry and then lie to you about who they are, contact Attorney Sidney Childress at childresslaw@hotmail.com to schedule a consultation. I SUE TELEMARKETERS
