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Due to Lawsuit, Collections Call Center Must Now Pay $1.5 Million to Man it Attempted to Collect From
June 02, 2010
A jury has awarded a Texas man more than $1.5 million in a lawsuit over profane voicemail messages allegedly left by a collections agency.
Allen Jones of Lewisville, Texas, was reportedly subjected to harassing phone calls from employees at Advanced Call Center Technologies (ACT) back in 2007.
According to the complaint, ACT employees were trying to collect on a credit card debt when they used racially-charged remarks in the voice messages. Jones saved the recordings and his attorneys used them to sue the company.
In a published report, Dean Siotos, a lawyer for Advanced Call Center Technologies, said the voicemails are not representative of how the company normally operates. He added that the calls 'must have been in some sort of personal attack unrelated to the business.'
The two ACT employees who allegedly left the messages reportedly no longer work at the company.
After a two-week trial, the jury found ACT had violated Texas debt collection rules and awarded Jones $50,000 for mental anguish, $143,000 in attorney's fees and $1.5 million in additional damages.
Still no word yet on whether ACT will appeal.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard
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