“The responsible company will reduce its exposure dramatically by taking proactive steps to mitigate damages.”
Having said that, a federal judge quite clearly indicated his view of where one national cable company resides on the spectrum of responsible corporate entities by calling out the company for public criticism and fining it heavily for engaging “unthinkingly” in harassing consumer behavior.
The culprit is Time Warner Cable, and its conduct that resulted in a punitive judicial response is something that high numbers of consumers in Pennsylvania and nationally have borne the brunt of for many years.
Namely, that is this: the incessant robocalling that companies engage in.
It would undoubtedly be a hard search to track down a consumer anywhere in the country who hasn’t picked up the phone and been victimized by an unwanted sales pitch delivered via a recording.
As grating — indeed, obnoxious — as those calls can get, they were simply over the top for one woman who was repeatedly called mistakenly by Time Warner after a customer incorrectly listed her phone number on an account.
She complained. The calls mounted. She sued. The calls continued.
She got a consumer protection attorney. She won.
In fact, the judge was so piqued with the cable company that he penalized it for every call it made to the woman, awarding her punitive damages that tripled the customary penalty.
All told, the woman was awarded $1,500 for every one of her 153 unwanted contacts from Time Warner.
The company said it never knew that the customer was on its “don’t call” list. The judge called that claim bogus and wrote in his opinion that Time Warner “cannot complain” about the damages slapped upon it.
Passively accepting the harassing and even abusive behavior that centrally defines incessant robocalling needn’t be a consumer’s sole “option.” As noted in the above story, securing assistance from a proven consumer law attorney can produce an altogether different outcome for an I’ve-had-it consumer.
Source: The Washington Post, “153 unwanted robocalls cost Time Warner Cable $1,500 each. Do the math,” Will Greenberg, July 8, 2015