FCC Robocall Enforcement A Feckless Mess, Experts Once Again Tell Congress

We’ve long noted how absurd it is that scammers, debt collectors, and greedy telemarketers have ruined our voice communications networks. We’ve also noted how a big reason our robocall problem never gets fixed is because the regulator in charge of it (the FCC) routinely fixates on scammers and not the “legit” companies that use the same tactics and routinely undermine reform and enforcement efforts.

The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has been making this point for a long while, and this week the NCLC’s Senior Counsel Margot Freeman Saunders testified before Congress about the robocall problem. Her key points, once again, were that the lion’s share of robocallers are everyday companies who’ve worked tirelessly (with notable success) to ensure regulators are as feckless as possible.

But she was also once again quick to point out the FCC isn’t doing its job:

“We believe the number of illegal calls would be significantly reduced if the FCC were to adopt a system of swiftly suspending the ability of complicit providers to transmit illegal calls after they have been notified of previous illegal transmissions.”

Saunders’ 2018 testimony made many of the same points, yet we’ve seen only modest progress. Last year the organization circulated this chart showing you who the biggest offenders actually are when it comes to robocalls:

A lot of robocallers are debt collectors who harass people they know can’t pay outstanding debts, inundating some folks with as many as 500 calls per week. There’s also an endless amount of telecom companies that call you to upsell you to more expensive services. And, of course, there are the robocalls you actually want, and don’t want hamstrung by enforcement efforts.

There’s a bit of a double whammy here. One, the FCC has historically been largely feckless when it comes to consumer protection and standing up to bigger companies. They’ve been complicit in discussing the robocall problem as if scammers are the only problem, because scammers generally don’t have high powered lobbyists and lawyers pulling from nearly unlimited budgets.

The other problem is that while the FCC is supposed to enforce robocall offenses and levy fines, they aren’t allowed to collect fines. That’s left to the DOJ, which routinely just… doesn’t bother. As a result a comically small volume of the overall fines levied are ever actually collected. For example between 2015 and 2019 the FCC issued $208.4 million in robocall fines, but collected just $6,790.

Some of that is because it’s hard to collect fines on criminals who use spoofed numbers and a tangled web of fake addresses. But still, Saunders notes that the FCC doesn’t really do a good job at enforcement even when the culprits are clear:

“Of the more than 7,000 voice service providers with certifications in the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD), the FCC has brought a total of 27 enforcement actions for deficient certifications; many of these actions addressed providers’ failure to upload relevant documents rather than actual sub-standard practices. The fines issued against some of the most egregious fraudsters have not been recovered, which undermines the intended deterrent effect of imposing these fines. Yet the Commission has referred only three forfeiture orders to the Department of Justice related to unwanted calls since the FCC began TRACED Act reporting in 2020.”

Again, the primary reason the FCC is so feckless, understaffed, and undermanned is because “legitimate industry” — not scammers operating out of dodgy strip malls — has spent the better part of a generation lobbying to make them that way. Real reformers genuinely can’t even survive the FCC nomination process (see: the Gigi Sohn saga), ensuring the agency is routinely staffed with status quo careerists.

That the agency can’t or won’t do its job if it requires standing up to big companies (like the wireless giants that spent a decade dragging their feet on basic anti robocall number spoofing measures, or the broadband monopolies that routinely rip you off) should surprise absolutely nobody at this point.