Business Blog
Decision bolsters FTC position on soundboard tech
On April 27, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed a challenge to a November 2016 FTC staff letter addressing certain prerecorded calls or “robocalls” using soundboard technology.
Soundboard robocalls use live agents to play recorded messages instead of talking to the person who picks up the phone. Over the years, the FTC has received numerous complaints about these calls from consumers reporting that they weren’t getting appropriate responses to their questions or comments – even when they asked to speak to a live agent. The FTC also learned that operators were often juggling multiple calls at once. As a result, the November 2016 letter announced that FTC staff would begin treating calls using soundboard technology as robocalls under the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
The Soundboard Association went to court to challenge the November 2016 staff letter. Last year, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the letter was properly issued and didn’t violate the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment requirements. The Association appealed. In the recent ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court dismissed the Soundboard Association’s challenge to the letter outright, holding that the November 2016 FTC staff letter was not a “final agency action” that would justify review under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The message for marketers has not changed: FTC staff regard calls using soundboard technology as robocalls for TSR purposes. This means that companies must have each consumer’s express written consent before calling and that fundraisers can only use soundboard technology to solicit charitable contributions from previous donors: no robocalls to new donors.
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.