The Federal Communications Commission, working through its Enforcement Bureau, has stepped up efforts to protect consumers.
Travel Agency Fined
The bureau recently fined a travel agency $85,000 for sending junk faxes after ignoring an initial warning, said the unit’s head, David Solomon, during a presentation last month at the Direct Marketing Association’s Government Affairs Conference 2000 in Washington. The bureau has begun an intensive effort to shut down such faxes.
Three fines totaling over $4 million were recently handed out to telecommunications firms for slamming customers, Solomon said. Slamming is the unauthorized switching of a party’s presubscribed long-distance carrier.
In addition, Sprint and Excel signed consent decrees and paid $250,000 and $400,000, respectively, for slamming.
Cracking Down
The Enforcement Bureau, hoping to deter this practice, adopted new rules at its April meeting.
The rules require that a slammed customer does not have to pay the bill for 30 days. If the customer had already paid it, the unauthorized carrier must reimburse the authorized one and pay an additional 50% of the bill’s charges to the consumer, Solomon said.
Another action was taken against AT&T following a formal complaint when the telecommunications giant ignored a name on a do-not-call list but instead telemarketed to another member of the same household, Solomon said. He added that do-not-call lists apply to entire households, not just an individual’s name.
The bureau has spent “lots of time” forming its core rules, and it’s now making sure that companies are following those rules, Solomon continued.
He said the bureau responds to 50,000 to 70,000 informal consumer complaints each year and another two dozen to three dozen formal complaints from business competitors that often end up in court.
Shared Database
To further advance its enforcement efforts, the bureau is setting up a database with the Federal Trade Commission and certain states to share information on consumer complaints.
Enforcement includes warnings or fines of non-compliant companies.
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