This lawsuit alleges that Total Customer Services violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) by leaving voice messages on consumers’ answering machines that failed to properly identify that Total Customer Services was a debt collector attempting to collect on a debt.
The FDCPA is designed to prohibit unfair debt collection practices. The FDCPA has “per se” violations, which means that such a violation is automatically a violation of the FDCPA. To prohibit harassment and abuses by debt collectors, the FDCPA, at 15 U.S.C. § 1692d, provides that a debt collector may not engage in any conduct the natural consequence of which is to harass, oppress, or abuse any person in connection with the collection of a debt and names a non-exhaustive list of certain per se violations of harassing and abusive collection conduct. 15 U.S.C. § 1692d(l)-(6). Among the per se violations prohibited by that section are the placement of telephone calls without meaningful disclosure of the caller's identity. 15 U.S.C. § 1692d(6).
This lawsuit alleges that Total Customer Services violated the FDCPA by among other acts:
- Leaving messages for consumers, which fail to provide meaningful disclosure of Defendant's identity;
- Leaving messages for consumers, which fail to disclose that the call is from a debt collector; and
- Leaving messages for consumers, which fail to disclose the purpose or nature of the communication (i.e. an attempt to collect a debt).
Topic: Consumer
