WASHINGTON: The Federal Trade Commission has levied fines against DirecTV and Comcast for breaking the federal “do-not-call” law. DirectTV of El Segundo, Calif., has agreed to pay $2.31 million and Comcast, headquartered in Philadelphia, is paying $900,000 to settle charges, published reports indicate. Both providers were accused of having telemarketers call consumers who specifically requested to be taken off the company’s call lists. One DirecTV telemarketer agreed to pay $115,000 for making prerecorded sales calls to do-not-call listed individuals.
DirecTV’s fine was related to more than 1 million calls asking people to remove themselves from the Fed’s do-not-call list, the Los Angeles Timessaid. (Story continues after Sponsored Link.)
“From time to time,” the message stated, DirecTV “extend[s] exciting offers to our loyal customers like you. But because you are on the DirecTV Do Not Call list, we are not able to contact you for these exciting offers.”
Recipients were instructed to press 1 to be removed from the list.
DirecTV was fined $5.3 million in 2005 for doing the same thing.
Neither company admitted to wrong-doing.
Dish Network and two of its telemarketers are in court with the FTC over do-not-call violations, The Wall Street Journal reported. Those cases remain pending.
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