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Local man sues over junk phone calls that urge him to update his Google listing
By adamg on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:12am
A man fed up with getting calls on his cell phone from some search-engine-optimization company is turning to the federal court system for help.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Adam Russell, described as a Middlesex County resident, cited a number of calls from a California company called 29 Prime. Russell says he either gets dead air or a recording warning him that he has not updated his "free Google listing."
In addition to the money for himself, Russell is also seeking to be named lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit against the company, which he charges has made "thousands of calls per day" to people across the country. The suit seeks at least $1,500 for each call.
Russell says the calls he's gotten violate the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act because he has never done business with the company and has never given his permission to be called by the company.
Free tagging:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Russell's complaint | 146.98 KB |
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Comments
Not saying the guy's suit
doesn't have merit, but really now - who blindly answers calls from numbers they don't recognize?
People shouldn't have to
People shouldn't have to waste their time screening calls which they legally aren't supposed to be able to get in the first place.
The guy should have a right to answer the phone
Who knows who it could be? Perhaps an old pal, or an actual casual business contact with whom he would actually want to talk.
I'm sorry, but this hits a never with me. I hate that I've become a screener. I'm on the do not call list, yet those same freaking 877 numbers come up every day. I hope this guy takes them down. My fear is that the scumbags with just declare bankruptcy and go on to some new scam.
When I was younger, the default was to answer the phone. You'd need a reason not to. Now the default is to not answer the phone, that you'd need a reason to answer it. These scumbags and people like them have made it so.
Sometimes
Sometimes I get calls from "unknown" numbers that are actually important. I've gotten service call confirmations the utility companies, phone calls from my doctor's office and pharmacy, calls from job interviewers. There are a lot of business lines where you'll have the main customer number saved, but not the outgoing secondary lines.
It's frustrating to try to conduct adult business while being constantly interruped by scammers.
More serious problems with this
I know MDs who change their numbers occasionally because they need to be able to answer calls from and about their patients ... and yet they constantly get interrupted by illegal spamming calls. They can't just screen them, either, because they don't necessarily know where the calls that are important might be coming from.
Needs a Google Voice number.
Needs a Google Voice number.
For privacy-protected calls?
No. Google has the ability to record and transcribe calls for data mining - an absolute HIPAA no-no.
Duh
Duh, every business answers calls from numbers they don't know. That's how you talk to new clients. I got these calls at an architecture office that I answered the phone for. Drove me absolutely crazy.
Yep
My company mandates that my cell phone number be listed on my business cards. I get calls from all kinds of numbers I don't know, asking questions, wanting tickets, setting meetings, telling me they're running late, etc. I try to answer every time my phone rings and probably 1/3 of the time it's a telemarketer wanting to lower my interest rate (of course they don't know what credit cards I have) or telling me I've won a cruise.
If you've received calls to
If you've received calls to your cell phone from irritating telemarketers day after day, you'll know why the Telephone Consumer Protection Act was written.
Now if they would just enforce it, we would be all set.
.
Too bad the law doesn't actually mean anything
It's nice that they made the Telephone Consumer Protection Act but we should not have to hire lawyers and sue companies in order to get it enforced! The authorities should already be going after these guys. You think they don't get any of these calls at police stations etc???
JcT
Your an idiot
I have had 5 calls today from these guys. All different IDs and phone numbers. There is no way to know whether the calls are spammers or customers.
If your my customer calling to order or need help you expect me to answer. These bogus calls are a huge time waster and they come several times a day
Business has to answer
People who owner there own business have to answer DUH!, and they continually use a different number so you can file a complaint all you want they just keep calling. Our government should be doing it job and pursuing these companies.
Who doesn't answer the call?
We are getting at least 10 of these calls a day. Each time we put the number on the list to not ring. But the numbers change and it's time consuming to answer these calls and to add to the block list.
You ask, "who blindly answers calls from numbers they don't recognize?"
We do. We are running business. We have to answer. Or be out of business. We can't remember thousands of customers phone numbers. We can't know all the possible potential customer's phone numbers.
Who blindly answers? I Do
Hi, your question caught my eye. I would also like to take a crack at those making these calls. I blindly answer because I am a business who relies on every call for my work. I have given no permissions for the advertisers or marketers to call me. A number shows but no identification as to who it is. The same as most of the home owners who I receive work from. Who blindly answers callers without a name. I do. I have added about 50 of these numbers to my blocked call list and they just keep coming with new numbers. The government likes to get involved with so maany things that they haave no business in. They realloy should be jumping into things like this which are illegal to be happening yet they couldn't care less. They just want to keep creating new laws to counter act the ones they made last week that made no sense. A billion laws ono record and most of them counteract stupid laws that5 should have never been made. Why not get rid of the laws or better yet, get rid of the government who do so much more harm. Wait a second, to do that they would have to make yet another worthless government position paying a lot of tax dollars to eliminate what should have never been to start with. No wonder the freaking us debt is so high. Guess you never had to rely on phone calls for to have work to do and afford to live. Who blindly answers a call.
Yes you do answer
When you are trying to run a business, Yes, you actually do have to answer every call.
People that own businesses
People that own businesses have to answer phone calls from unknown numbers that's how we stay in business. These people just take time out of your day trying to scam you. Wondering what happened with the law suit. They have called me about 5-8 times at 1500 each that would be nice.
those of us whom have
those of us whom have businesses
Who answers blind phone calls, because MAYbe they're a scam?
Everyone in our organization answers 'blind calls". Why wouldn't you ?
No business expects only friends to call you, so you recognize the caller!!
Why would you live in fear of answering a phone call? Even a bold Texan-
open carrying a sidearm should not fear a phone call- Hey you can always
shoot your phone in the face- THAT'll get 'those pesky callers" ;-).
Also, we do NOT have call display, as our phones are all (still excellent) Vantage
and Escort older Nortel phones made locally about 1985 vintage- no call display.
every business ever
every business ever
Not making the world a better place
As with most class-action lawsuits, this is just lawyer-driven litigation. Note that there are 4 separate law firms listed as representing this guy, each looking for a big slice of the inevitable settlement.
I'm no fan of big lawsuits
I'm no fan of big lawsuits that mostly enrich the lawyers. But can you think of a better way to stop this illegal telemarketer under current laws?
So you're saying that
the only way to enforce a Federal Law (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) is by filing a civil lawsuit against the violator? Talk about a law written for the benefit of the legal profession.
What should he have done instead of hiring these law firms?
Finally!
I really do not understand why an individual has to step up and deal with these scumbags. Where is Google in all of this? There is a company misrepresenting itself as Google and Google does not seems to care. I can tell you that is a company was misrepresenting itself as Microsoft or Apple, they would not last long.
I've been getting these calls at my house for years now. I used option 2 (remove from calling list) a few times but that is a bogus option. Now I press 1 and tell whoever it is on the line to go %$# themselves. I've done that 6 times now, but still get calls.
UPDATE YOUR GOOGLE FREE LISTING BS
First of all, it is not from Google. Secondly, they are very annoying. This is how I've had to deal with these unwanted sales calls. After I receive a call, I will make sure that the number they are using is placed on my contact list as an annoying free google listing call. That way, when they call me again using that same number, I merely ignore the call. Right now I have no less than 10 numbers. I just added the last one a few minutes ago. I am fed up with those morons and I will too seek legal remedy if I continue to receive unwanted calls. On some days, I've received 3 to 4 calls from that one number. Then after ignoring them, they resort to spoofing another number in order to fool me into listening to their robo call. BS.
Google Listings
I just ask them to wait on hold and wait a few minutes until they hang up. That's three minutes that they are not bothering someone else.
GOOGLE HARRASSMENT CALLS
We have been getting the "update your Google Listing" calls as well for at least a year and have frequently spoken to a REP to request "Please add us to the DO NOT CALL" List. Which they reply "they do not have one and do not have to abide by one... it is not a law" Very very annoying and disrupts work flow. I hope they pay more than just $1500 a call and the lawsuit should include anyone taking the time to complain. There should be a Federal Communications Agency that needs to become involved.
"Google" calls
Over the past 7 months, I have accumulated 113 different phone numbers from robocalls and a few human callers that wanted to do "free updates" on my Google information. I have stored them all on my cell phone. I originally blocked these numbers, but I apparently hit my limit on the number of numbers that I can block. Sometimes I only get two or three calls a week, but I have gotten as many as 5 calls in one day. There's no way to pre-screen these calls. There used to be a day when you could be suspicious of any call that came in from a different area code, but with the advent of the cell phone and our mobile society moving here from all over the country, it's now impossible! Ironic, my phone is ringing right now with my Google Marketing designation! "Google Marketing" probably accounts for 10-15% of my calls and I get a lot of calls. Got a lawsuit brewing? Count me in!
Google telemarketers
113 different phone numbers ... I have 58 PAGES of numbers - not all Google related, but MOST are (the rest are mostly merchant account services). It's an infuriating time waster for businesses.
A company misrepresenting itself as Microsoft wouldnt last long?
"I can tell you that is a company was misrepresenting itself as Microsoft or Apple, they would not last long.'
Wrong. I get calls DAILY from "Microsoft" telling me a virus has been detected on my PC. The real Microsoft can't do anything about it just like Google can't do anything about people illegally using their name to dupe an unsuspecting and gullible public. The reason I get so many of these calls from "Google" and "Microsoft"? Because it works. I look up the number on sites like this and see all these people asking "Why do they call me? I'm on the DNC list and I've repeatedly asked them to take me off their phone list." OMG. These are overseas criminals. They do not care about your request, the DNC list, the FBI, or anything else other that taking your money. They are in places like India and Nigeria where our American laws have no meaning. There is no possibility of them answering for their crimes. Their intent was is tell you enough lies to get you to part with your money, nothing more.
Calls from Google
I just had an interesting thing happen with these calls. I called my sister in Montana and about 5 minutes later a google call came from the same place! So they are stalking the phones or something? How disturbing.
How do I join this lawsuit
How do I join this lawsuit because they have also been harassing my business since last September
I have numerous phone calls listed
They call several times a day. I have talked to different agents asking to be taken off the list and they keep harassing me