A woman in Tennessee just won half a million dollars in a lawsuit against a furniture company.
The thing is, it wasn't about sub-par products or anything, and she'd only ever been to their store once. In fact, it's just because they wouldn't stop harassing her.
Veronica Davis began receiving calls from the furniture chain Conn's way back in September of 2015. It was just after she'd purchased some furniture from one of their local stores. Davis bought the item on EMI which, her lawyer says, the contract specifies were to be paid on the fifth of each month, but had a 10 day grace period within which payments wouldn't be considered late.
Apparently despite this grace period, the company started spamming Davis with calls between the 5th and 15th of every month, using an automated dialing system. You know, those god-awful robocalls you're probably used to. According to the case records, Conn's called her more than 10 times a day, driving her insane.
In 2017, Davis says she revoked her consent for the company to contact her anymore, to end the madness. They didn't take the hint however, instead calling her another 306 times, up to a dozen times a day. And so, she filed a complaint in consumer court, saying the use of robocalls to spam her was a violation of the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This law restricts robocalls and telemarketing calls, so a company flouting them despite the customer's non-consent put them in deep trouble..
The furniture chain has now been hit with a hefty fine they have to pay Davis. They have less than 30 days now to pay her a whopping $495,000 (or approximately Rs 3.43 crore), which is the maximum penalty of $1,500 per call to her after she'd revoked consent to be contacted. Though the furniture chain has filed an appeal, it's unlikely they're going to be able to get of the payment.
The stupid thing here, is that Conn's could have avoided all of this by not cutting corners. It's not illegal in the US to repeatedly call a person that owes your company money, even multiple times a day. You just have to make sure it's a human on the other end of the line and not an automated system.
Of course, India also has laws to protect people from receiving spam calls and SMSs from telemarketers. Covered under the Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations, they allow you to unsubscribe from all such unsolicited communications if you see fit. To do that, all you have to do is register with the National Do Not Call Registry here.
To the best of our knowledge, no person has successfully sued any company or telemarketer for spam calls or messages in India so far.