The Inquirer-Home

Marketing outfit made 46 million illegal calls

The chair's too good for 'em
Thu Jan 31 2008, 09:20

A CALIFORNIAN telemarketing company which used automated gear to annoy the world with pre-recorded telemarketing pitches has been fined $180,000 for its antics.

The Federal Trade Commission that Voice-Mail Broadcasting Corporation (VMBC) made 46 million illegal calls using the equipment.

The FTC wanted to fine the company a million dollars but worked out that VMBC and its owner Jesse Crowe had no way to pay such a steep fine.

The calls were flogging debt-consolidation and mortgage brokerage services and other retail and financial services.

According to Network World, the equipment was supposed to leave messages on answerphones and it hung up if it got a human.

This is illegal, as the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rules say that calls should be connected to a human sales representative within two seconds.

Still, the charge of annoying that many people should have been dealt with by crucifixion we would have thought. For a first offence.

More here. µ

Share this:

Comments
Jesse Crowe

What is that such a big lie about Jesse Crowe, he can pay the fine, the man has about 3 million dollars has a big house in California and no children. He also has his office working in Argentina and India with everybody making low low salaries equivalent of about $500 per month. He is a fraud man also used the same peoples phone numbers from one customer to another. He lied to the government about not having the money he hides his money overseas.

posted by : Fiore, 25 November 2009 Complain about this comment
Express Consolidation

A few years ago, I used to receive calls promoting Express Consolidation. And when say calls, it is plurally plural: their automatic dialer was hammering my cell phone number really hard for hours at a time to the point of making it unusable. 

One time, I turned my phone off for about three hours and when I turned it back on, I had over 150 "missed" calls.

The second and fourth times this happened, I complained directly to Express but I was still hit by a fourth DoS attack, all of which spaced about a year apart. 

For the fourth time, I reported the incident to my phone carrier, police, CRTC and had a lawyer send them a registered C&D notice threatening to sue them for $500/call thereafter for their illegal use of ADAD. 

Looks like fourth time worked like a charm since it's been about four years since their last call.

As far as I am concerned, marketing companies that use broken ADADs or use them illegally deserve to be fined out of business.

posted by : Daniel S., 31 January 2008 Complain about this comment
aboutus
Advertisement
Subscribe to INQ newsletters
Advertisement
INQ Poll

Authorities in several countries raided Megaupload recently, shut down all of its services, seized hundreds of servers and arrested several of its executives on criminal charges.

Do you think the move was justified?