Honestly, I feel like you are totally abusing the law in this situation. At the first available opportunity, you should've asked to be placed on their DNC list without expressing false interest in their products. Then you would've been in the right by sueing for the first an all subsequent calls. It seems that you went about this in the most malicious way possible, even going so far as to essentially trick them into violating the law.
Sure, the fact that the bad guys are "playing dirty" doesn't mean it's moral for the good guys to do the same.
But in this case, simply lying that "that sounds interesting" before telling them he wasn't interested any more doesn't seem too serious. It's certainly not illegal.
You have a product yourself, if I contacted you and implied I was interested in becoming a customer, and we got to talking about it over the phone, would you look up your DNC list every single time before calling me just in case I had, since we last spoke, contacted a colleague of yours to be put on it?
That's the entire point of sanitising your lists. When someone asks you to stop calling them you remove their number and stop calling them.
Lists of names/numbers are for cold-calling, and yes, cold-calling should check any opt-outs first.
Once you are actually having conversations with a specific person about an actual sale, lists are no longer part of the equation. There's not a salesman in the world who, if asked by a customer to call them back (as happened in this case) would check a list before calling them back. It just wouldn't happen, ever. And frankly it shouldn't be expected to happen, the only time it would ever be useful to check a list is the very rare occurrence where the customer is trying to catch you out by telling you he's interested but he actually isn't.
It is so much better if this incident sets a standard for their company and the telemarketers are forced to validate each time irrespective of their past association with the callers.
Other than random, unexpected cases of people trying to trick you, any customer in the world would, if they changed their mind about being interested, wait for the call back and say it then, not contact someone else at the company to be put on a do not call list.
I would hope that companies do more due diligence when a customer is not calling back. Maybe the customer changed their minds. The problem with telemarketers is that they don't care about what customers are thinking and so someone else went ahead and called him.
What I would prefer is (and this is where I think I don't want to give any inch of room for the sales person) is that they constantly have to be aware of what the customer's latest situation is. I would prefer all telemarketers get trained this way and not intrude. Don't you think this is better?
http://www.five9.com/call-center-software/features/do-not-ca...
> Five9 helps you comply with this legislation by letting you upload your company's supplemental Do Not Call list, which prevents these numbers from being dialed by your outbound and autodialer campaigns, and even manual calls placed by agents. In addition, you can automatically track requests for Do Not Call from inbound return calls, and enable agents to fulfill callers' requests to be placed on the Do Not Call list in real-time.
It's easy stuff if you're trying to be legit. There are a lot of companies that don't make that effort.
It's not like he got in touch with a sales guy who was going to take him to dinner. He just got to a human at a telemarketing company. They are just cogs in a larger machine.
This is what I read: It says: you can't call someone that says "Don't call me" However, if you have a written policy to try your best and follow the law and generally your business follows the policy, then you are not liable for violating this rule if it was a simple mistake.
So the case of David calling him back a few days later may have been an honest mistake. But the if the business did not have a written policy in place, have training of the policy, maintain a list of DNC numbers, etc. then they are liable for the mistake.
That's how I understand it. So it seems the law is forgiving for businesses that are trying to follow the law. But I am not a lawyer, so my reading comprehension skills are worth very little.
When I receive another email I just delete it. I'd rather go on with my day and do productive things then getting all bent of of shape about it.
BUT! I agree some telephone marketing campaigns can be down right harassing. But 4 calls over 2 months? I would have just sent them to voicemail and deleted them without listening. To each his own, I suppose.
Basically the fact that they called him without reason and avoided providing their actual contact information would seem to make a judge question the relationship they might have.
I also suspect that the company actively breaking the law as part of their business model must know something about the laws they're tangling with, and they settled with him for $4K rather than actually to go to small claims court over $7500.