Those calls from telemarketers are more than annoying. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a lot of them are illegal, and the law lets you collect money from the company that made them.
You do not have to keep putting up with it. A Mississippi Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawyer can file suit on your behalf and pursue $500 for every call, or up to $1,500 per call when the company broke the law knowingly.
You do not just have to deal with it when telemarketers are breaking the law. You can hire an experienced Mississippi TCPA lawyer to file a lawsuit on your behalf.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) has been on the books for over three decades. Unwanted phone calls (on landlines) and faxes were spiraling out of control.
Fast forward to today, and the problem is even worse as technology has given telemarketers new tools to annoy consumers. Automatic telephone dialing systems with pre-recorded messages are a huge annoyance and TCPA violations.
Now, telemarketing calls can reach you where you are through calls to your cell phones and junk texts. Given the extensive reach of telemarketers, you must take decisive legal action to stop them. If you feel like you’re being harassed by unwanted calls, contact Ware Law Firm in Mississippi today for relief.
How the Telephone Consumer Protection Act Protects You From Unwanted Calls
The TCPA governs a variety of communication methods used for telemarketing, including auto-dialed calls, pre-recorded calls, text messages, and unsolicited messages to fax machines.
In addition, the TCPA authorizes the creation of the National Do-Not-Call List, which allows individuals to opt out of receiving telemarketing calls.
The TCPA prohibits the following:
- Phone calls to residences during the night and early morning hours
- Phone calls to homes with automated voices or recordings
- Text messaging someone else on a wireless phone using an automatic telephone dialing system
- Phone calls for five years after you have told the telemarketer not to contact you.
These regulations help protect consumers from unwanted and intrusive communications and ensure that telemarketers are operating in a transparent and ethical manner.
Do-Not-Call List
Telemarketers are required to maintain a do-not-call registry. As a consumer, you have the right to place your phone numbers on a national Do-Not-Call registry that telemarketers must honor. If you are on the registry, companies can only call you with written consent or if you have recently done business with them within the last 18 months. Some businesses break these rules, thinking that they can get away with it.
Can a Debt Collector Robocall You?
Owing money does not give a collector the right to robocall your cell phone. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act still applies to them. If a collector used an autodialer or a prerecorded message to reach your cell without your consent, or kept calling after you told them to stop, that is a violation with its own damages, separate from any claim you may have under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Getting prerecorded messages from a collector? Schedule a free consultation to find out what those calls are worth.
Potential Penalties & Damages in a TCPA Case
The government can take enforcement action against a company that violates the provisions of the TCPA. Even more important for your purposes, the telemarketer can also be liable to you in a civil lawsuit. It does not matter whether you suffered a financial loss. By breaking the law, the telemarketer must pay.
Usually, a civil lawsuit against a telemarketer proceeds as a class action lawsuit. Suppose the telemarketer is sending pre-recorded messages via robocalls or spam texts. In that case, chances are that they are making thousands or millions of these communications.
The TCPA provides that you can recover the following in a lawsuit against the telemarketer:
- $500 per violation of the TCPA
- Triple damages if the defendant was found to have willfully violated the law
There are no statutory limits on damages. There have been cases where defendants have been ordered to pay or have settled cases for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.
The court will consider the realities of the situation, meaning that they may not order a defendant to pay billions of dollars if they made millions of calls. However, you could get up to $1,500 for unwanted phone calls and texts.