A company is facing a Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuit for allegedly using an automated telephone dialing system to generate leads for its life insurance business, by having an artificial prerecorded voice greet the plaintiff when he picked ip the phone.
The Background: The plaintiff received a call in September 2022 and was greeted by an artificial prerecorded voice that said “My name is Becky from Senior Benefits. How are you today?” The plaintiff replied, “Hello Robot. How are you?” The recording then proceeded to tell the plaintiff about the reason for the call and offered the opportunity to learn more.
- The plaintiff “played along” because he is a frequent recipient of these kinds of calls and wanted to put a stop to them. For that, he needed to determine the identity of the company that was calling him.
- The plaintiff stayed on the phone long enough to be transferred to three different individuals. The plaintiff asked the third representative to have his number placed on the defendant’s internal do not call list and to send him a copy of the company’s do not call policy. The representative did not ask for the plaintiff’s contact information, because she was not trained in the existence or usage of such a policy, according to the complaint.
The Claim: The technology that was used to make the call to the plaintiff has to be an ATDS because “it wold be illogical to dial a number manually, have Plaintiff answer the phone, and only then connect Plaintiff to a human being,” according to the complaint.
- The plaintiff accuses the defendant of violating Section 227 of the TCPA by sending calls to the plaintiff’s cell phone using an ATDS.
- Because the defendant made multiple calls to the plaintiff, it willfully and knowingly violated the TCPA, according to the complaint.
- The plaintiff also accuses the defendant of violating the TCPA by placing a call to the plaintiff’s residential phone, which was registered on the national Do Not Call registry.
- The defendant is also accused of violating the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act.