Yet another national banking giant agrees to pay a whopping settlement to a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawsuit. As of June 30th, Wells Fargo Bank is due to reimburse over three million customers a serious sum for its alleged TCPA violations. The violation: contacting consumers’ cellular phones by using an automated telephone dialing system (ATDS) without their express consent. The sum: $16.3 million.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is a law implemented by the Federal Communications Commission. It seeks to protect consumers from excessive telephone solicitations by outlining a series of restricted behaviors. Using an automated telephone dialing system to contact personal cell phone numbers without a consumer’s consent is one of those behaviors. An ATDS is defined as “equipment which has the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called using a random or sequential number generator with the ability to dial such numbers.”
Markos v. Wells Fargo Bank was filed in April of last year but has just begun to approach a resolution as plaintiffs seek preliminary approval of the class action settlement. Plaintiffs include Steven Markos, Tiffany Davis, and Gregory Page representing themselves and millions of others in the same situation. The initial lawsuit alleged Wells Fargo had called plaintiffs on their personal cell phones using an ATDS or prerecorded voice messages without their consent, an act that violates the TCPA. Calls were not about emergency situations such as fraudulent activity; rather, they were standard debt-collection calls and texts regarding home equity loans and residential mortgage loans.
Good-faith negotiations with Wells Fargo Bank were pursued through private mediation. Wells Fargo is due to pay a non-reversionary cash sum of $16,319,000 to all plaintiffs after deductions are made. An estimation of the per-class-member cash award ranges between $25 and $75. This applies to the proposed Settlement Class. The three Representatives, Markos, Davis, and Page, may see sums of up to $20,000 each for the personal time they have invested, according to their attorneys.
The TCPA madness continues. Creditors can’t seem to help themselves when it comes to doing anything possible to collect a debt. They go to great lengths to hunt down debtors, going so far as invading their privacy, continuing to contact individuals after they have been told to stop calling, continuously calling wrong persons and showing a complete disregard for the law. If you are the victim of annoying phone calls, look no further than Ft.Lauderdale Attorney Jibrael S. Hindi and his team of lawyers specializing in TCPA and other consumer law matters in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and across the state of Florida. Allow the Law Offices of Jibrael S. Hindi to determine whether you have a case. If you do have a case, under the TCPA you are entitled to $500-$1500 per call! You will never pay our firm a dime unless we make a recovery on your behalf! Fight back against harassing, annoying and abusive robo-calls today. Call 1-844-JIBRAEL or contact us online for a free in depth consultation.