Verizon announced today that it has won permanent injunctions to stop two telemarketing firms from making illegal sales calls to cell phone customers.
Two telemarketing firms, Intelligent Alternatives of San Diego, CA, and Resort Marketing Trends of Coral Springs, FL, are licking their wounds today, after each company was ordered to pay $20,000 in damages to Verizon Wireless.
Verizon will put the 40K into the coffers of its Hopeline program, a program where Verizon collects phones and accessories from any service provider and refurbishes or recycles them. Proceeds from the HopeLine program benefit victims of domestic violence and non-profit advocacy agencies, providing essential communication tools of wireless phones and wireless services, and financial grants. Hopeline also makes financial grants to regional and national domestic violence organizations, such as the Family Violence Prevention Fund, and the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Using automated dialers and pre-recorded messages to market to wireless devices machines has been against the law since the Can Spam act passed into law in 2003.
“These actions demonstrate once again our commitment to protecting our customers against invasions of their privacy,” said Steven Zipperstein, general counsel and vice president of legal and external affairs at Verizon Wireless. “We will vigorously defend the strong wall of customer privacy we’ve built over the years through our aggressive pro-consumer policies and actions.”
Verizon does a good job of protecting its customers’ privacy.
The company’s record of protecting customer privacy puts Verizon Wireless at the forefront of the U.S. wireless industry. This summer, Verizon Wireless secured a court order to halt a Tennessee-based company’s illegal practice of obtaining and selling confidential customer telephone records. Last month, Verizon Wireless also obtained an immediate injunction against a Florida-based private investigative agency and its affiliates to stop their attempts to fraudulently gather confidential customer information, and filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against another Florida company to stop it from sending tens of thousands of unsolicited text messages, also known as “wireless spam,” to Verizon Wireless customers.
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