Mistake of the Week: FCC’s Reassigned Number Database

For the past year or so, we’ve been seeing an increasing number of class actions filed alleging that although the lead form appears to contain a valid telemarketing authorization, the phone number that was provided no longer belongs to the person that filled out the intake form. In other words, the phone number entered was correct when entered by the consumer, but then that phone number was later reassigned, and we ended up calling the wrong person.  This was a problem that plagued the industry for many years. After all, when a consumer dies, the phone number they had often gets released so it can be given to someone else down the road. This also often happens with land lines (and sometimes even with cell phones) when people move, retire, etc.  Historically, the FTC did a poor job of keeping the National Do Not Call Registry current in this regard.

That means that in certain cases, the authorizations that we obtain to contact the lead may no longer be valid. The potential solution to this problem (which is not always completely reliable) is the FCC’s cell phone reassignment database, or “RND.” The RND is specifically designed to prevent a consumer from receiving unwanted calls that were intended for someone else who previously held that telephone number. It can be a critical liability-avoiding device if we use the database to determine whether the telephone number in our system has been reassigned. Because if we are about to call a telephone number based on a prior authorization received from Mr. Jones, when in fact Mrs. Smith now owns that telephone number, we’re walking into a losing liability scenario.  Moreover, if you utilize the RND and it turns out the RND was in error and that resulted in an improper telemarketing call, you can claim protection under a safe harbor provision of the law.

The good news is that improperly calling a reassigned number rarely rises to the level of a supportable class action. On the other hand, while we would generally expect such cases to be outliers and dealt with relatively easily when they arise, a large contractor running thousands of leads a month could otherwise find itself with a substantial grouping of stale authorizations and a potentially serious problem as a result. The RND can be found at www.reassigned.us.