That article has very little details. Best I can tell, the “enforcement” call itself is still a scam aimed at the gullible. There is no way any company can prove you agreed to anything with just a completely disassociated “yes”. If you’re willing to pay somebody because they have a recording of you saying “yes” (even though you know you never agreed to any such thing) then you’re willing to give people money for a myriad of reasons.
Sounds like sensational news to me.
Yep, it’s bullshit. The fact that the FCC published the notice doesn’t make it less bullshitty.
Except it is true and has happened. I had it happen to me. It was years ago but a company called and asked me if I wanted to change my phone service from my provider which was sprint to their service. I declined. They went ahead and processed a change anyway and for months I got billed by two phone services. When I confronted them about it they played a recording of my voice saying the word “yes” as proof of my authorization. The only time I said "yes: was when they asked me if I was me. I eventually got my issues with them fixed but they dragged their feet with the refund and basically had my money for over 6 months. The trick was that their service was billed through Sprint so until I notice unusually large phone bills I didnt even know they had pushed it through. I had to go through the Attorney Generals office to finally get my refund. The really funny thing was after I got my mess cleared up, they tried to pull the same crap on my brother. When he asked them to prove he requested a change in service, they played the recording. He immediately recognized it as my voice and not his. They actually used my voice to try and scam my brother! He called me and told me about it and I had him call the Attorney Generals office and file for fraud. Neither of us ever heard from that company again. They actually ended up passing a law to stop this scam, which they called “phone account spoofing” but it wouldn’t surprise me if there is some similar type of scam using that concept out there.
Oh I’m sure they tried it, but your voice is not actually consent in that way. It wouldn’t hold up to anyone that stood their ground.
Also years ago (maybe 15 to 20), but it happened to me too. I eventually put some kind of lock on my current provider, but yeah, it was a huge hassle when it happened. I think they counted on the hassle, that most people wouldn’t bother with it.
The “yes” recording you mentioned above was only used to try to get you to concede. It was total B.S. no different than if they sent you some chicken scratch scribble saying it was your signature. The fraudalent switch over of service had nothing to do with the recorded “yes” (they did that on their own). They clearly never tried to use your recorded “yes” to convince any authorities, make a case, etc. Your recorded “yes” was used against no one but you (e.g., they didn’t try to open accounts or make charges with 3rd parties).
Basically, the “yes” here had very little impact on the commision of the fraud or its ultimate success.
What Stusser and I are saying is that shady actors will be shady, but running around being scared of people recording you saying “yes” isn’t a real problem. Agreeing to pay people who try to get you to pay for things you didn’t buy or agree to is a problem, but it is an age old one that really isn’t made worse by the ability of people to record “yes”.
Well yeah, of course it’s not legal ground for them. But what’s frustrating is that they apparently had the power to change your service without your actual consent, with or without the “yes” recording. And yes, you could reverse that, but it was work you had to do on your end to reverse it. So in most cases, I would imagine it was a successful ploy.
These people pulled this scam on a whole lot of people and the loophole they used was the YES recording. At that time it was legal to change your provider with verbal confirmation. The law was changed to require written authorization in order to close that loophole. The whole thing was that they never expected to keep all of the money but even those that fought them provided them with liquid funds for a minimum of 6 months. Do this to 1000’s of people and you are talking a large amount of cash. Invest that money and even modest returns makes it rather profitable. So when they were confronted, they dragged their feet as long as possible but eventually refunded the money. Less the profit they made off it, of course.
As Stepsongrapes and others have stated,
slamming, (illegally switching phone providers) required no proof whatsoever, the incumbent carrier was simply notified that one of their customers had elected to switch providers.
Well, I can certainly help contribute to the thread drift.
My wife was dealing with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA, the Canadian government tax department) with some tax issues she had so it wasn’t unexpected when somebody called claiming that they were from from the CRA, However, I quickly whispered to her that no government employee would be calling her at 8 pm. She immediately went to red alert. Sure enough, the call seemed to be fishing for personal information. She hung up so I don;t know if the call was meant to progress to the demands for immediate payment to clear outstanding taxes.
Unsurprisingly…
What I’m say is that disassociated “yes” recording is not legal verbal confirmation of anything. If they were unscrupolous enough to switch you without your agreement, recording (or not recording) a disassociated “yes” wasn’t going to be what made it legal. Rather, if they’re recording it, they doing it as nothing more than a first-level attempt to further scam you by getting you to drop your attempts to fix it/go after them.
As Timemaster_Tim’s wiki link explains, the vulnerability of fraud comes from the permissive nature of switching based on merely alleged verbal confirmation and permitting switching without even having to first prove the verbal confirmation. It’s not that a disassociated “yes” was ever found to be enough if some proof of verbal confirmation was later required.
So, no, the recorded “yes” wasn’t loophole that led to this problem. You really don’t have to be afraid of saying “yes” over the phone.
If a system allows vendors to just pinky swear that you agreed (verbally, in writting, via DNA sample, whatever), it’s going to lead to fraud because there’s people in the world who don’t hesitate to swear to anything if it leads to a buck.
Whatever. This no longer applies anyway since the law was changed but yes they did use my recording as proof with sprint because when I called sprint, who was processing the billing, they played the recording back to me as proof of a verbal agreement and advised me that they were simply the biller and could not stop the charges. I had to go through the originating company. As I said this has been addressed legally and no longer applies as it now requires written permission. But it can and is still used as a scam. Is it legal? No not now but that doesnt stop them from using it to try and scam people. The simple solution is what I now do and that’s to not answer any calls from a number I do not recognize. If its important they will leave a message and I will get back to them. Is it no longer an issue? I really dont care if it is or if it isnt. I simply avoid the hassle completely and I advise that others do the same. So if your beef is about its legality, yay! You are correct, you winz the intranets. Its not about legality at this point its about avoiding an unnecessary pain in the ass situation.