• 04
  • January
    2012

State Attorneys General have voiced disapproval of new legislation that would allow "informational" calls to be made to any cell phone as well as restrict the rights of states to limit or control those calls.

The bill would also allow collection calls to be made to cell phones, which is unsurprising, given the bill was supported by Association of Credit and Collection Professionals, the American Bankers Association, and Consumer Bankers Association, among others.

Showing his disapproval, Illinois Attorney General Madigan said that, "It would open up the floodgates to telemarketers and debt collectors to call at all hours of the day, and prevent my office and other state attorneys general from enforcing strong laws that have previously banned this practice of robo-calling."

She is joined by Attorneys General from Illinois, Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon and Tennessee in opposing proposed legislation.

"Any Prior Relationship"

A troubling aspect of the bill is the fact that consent for the "informational" calls is obtained by "any prior relationship" with the entity where one has to provide a phone number. This means that consumers who purchase something and forced to supply their phone number as a contingency would be subject to these informational calls.

Classic "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" Proposition

The industry claims the bill would foster a "strong consumer-protection environment" and points such seemingly important rationales for the calls, such as warning consumers about "data breaches and fraud alerts" and "drug recalls."

But in their artfully constructed letter to Congress supporting the bill, they list their real area of interest at the end of the sentence: "protect consumers against the adverse consequences of failure to make timely payments on an account."

Perhaps only a banking industry lobbyist could describe collection calls as means of protecting consumers.

Luckily, should this become law, bankruptcy filers would still be protected from the automatic stay. Currently, an automatic stay halts all collection attempts via phone or otherwise against any consumer who files for bankruptcy protection.

Source: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3035