Time Warner Cable is giving Comcast -- which once changed a customer’s billing moniker to ‘ Asshole Brown’ and berated another user for simply wanting to disconnect -- a run for its money in the belligerent customer service department.
A federal judge just ordered that Time Warner must pay Texas resident Araceli King $229,500 for harassing her with 153 robocalls over the course of a year, ABC News reports.
In her original suit, King only sought statutory damages of $81,500. But given that the calls persisted even after King complained that Time Warner was calling the wrong number, and even after she filed suit, the judge called the company’s behavior “particularly egregious.” He found Time Warner in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which states that companies can’t robocall personal cell phones without consent, and awarded King the maximum fine of precisely $1,500 per call.
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“It’s man versus machine,” said King’s lawyer, Sergei Lemberg, who added that consumers should know that they have federal protections against such automated harassment. “You can’t even stop the machine.”
Time Warner had been trying to reach an unrelated customer with a delinquent bill named Luis Perez, who had formerly been assigned King’s cell phone number, according to court documents.
“We are reviewing the ruling and our options to determine how we are going to proceed," the unrelenting cable giant told ABC.
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