Sen. Chuck Schumer on Sunday urged the government to hang up on telemarketers who want to bypass the national “Do Not Call” list by sending pitches directly to a person’s cell phone voicemail, pleading not to “throw gas on a robocall wildfire.”
“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse with these robocalls, the telemarketing industry had gone behind the scenes to deliver us the last straw,” Schumer (D-NY) said as he announced that he sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission not to allow an exemption to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and preserve consumers’ rights.
”They would give you a voicemail, your phone wouldn’t ring, but you’d have tons of these darned messages piling up on your voicemail, ruining your voicemail,” Schumer said.
He added that that as well as being annoying the high-tech tactic could amount to a safety risk as unsolicited robocall voicemails “flood mailboxes, clogging out legitimate messages.”
”God forbid you got a serious message – someone sick, you need to pick up your kid at school, there’s an accident – you wouldn’t be able to get to it because there’d be so many of these darned useless solicitations on the phone,” he said.
Schumer said technology has moved ahead of the law and now allows robocall companies to make millions of calls with the push of one button while disguising the call-back number.
“In May of this year, just this year, New York City residents received 56 million robocalls. That’s enough for seven per resident,” he said. “That’s because they’re able to disguise the phone number so its harder to go after them.”
In the letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Schumer said the government agency should be working to make current laws stronger and not contemplating “allowing new and different ways for consumers to be overwhelmed by unwanted messages.”
He said Pai is one of the officials in the Trump administration who champion cutting regulations.
“The head of the FCC is one of these deregulation guys, who says let the companies do whatever they want. He’s against net neutrality. So I’m worried that he won’t side with us. That’s why we’re here,” Schumer said.