Hacker News Reader

Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

The first call after he goes on the DNC is clearly a violation.

The calls thereafter, when he's stringing them along...not so sure. Once you start saying "I'm interested, tell me more"...I think the company has a fairly solid claim of having a business relationship...if not legally, certainly ethically.

View on HN

In my opinion, the fact that there's no way to figure out who is calling you and hold them accountable without stringing them along makes this an ethical thing to do.

Yeah I think it sort of puts it in the hands of the judge at that point (I am talking about a small claims court).

I would be interesting to find out what would have happened in court.

Even with the most business-sympathetic judge, he should at least allow for the first couple of calls to be admitted as violations because in those cases he clearly did not have any semblance of a business relationship with them.

The most consumer-sympathetic judge would allow all calls to be counted against the company as the person did explicitly ask to be put on the DNL. He expresses an initial interest but then decided he didn't want anything to do with the company.

That's why I didn't sue for any of the calls after I talked to a rep - only the automated calls, and the call that came after I asked to be on the DNC list.

I read there were some calls inbetween that he didn't count. After that, he asked to be put on their Do Not Call list, and they still called a few more times. So violations for the first few and the last few.

What about the very first call? That's certainly a violation as well.

I agree that 1 or more calls were improper. And threatening to sue for that and getting money is fine. Maybe it doesn't matter that the last X calls weren't if the first Y calls were...still seemed worth pointing it out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com