Last week, the FCC completed its The Telephone Robocall Abuse
Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act)-mandated review of certain
regulations and regulatory exemptions adopted to implement the Telephone
Consumer Protection Act’s (TCPA) prohibitions and limitations on
robocalls. The Commission’s order reflects a number of victories for
positions CUNA advocated for, both on its own and in coalition with other trade
associations, including:
- Retention of and
codification of exemptions for financial institution calls to a
wireless number, including calls regarding fraudulent transactions,
security data breaches, and identity theft;
- Adoption of a
requirement that voice service providers that block calls must immediately
notify callers of such blocking; and
- Adoption of a
requirement that voice service providers respond to blocking disputes
through an established point of contact by providing a status update
within 24 hours.
Unfortunately, the Commission did adopt some restrictions to
exemptions for non-marketing informational calls, including account-related
calls, delivered via artificial or prerecorded voice to residential
landlines without the prior express consent of the called party, including:
- limiting the number of
such calls that can be made pursuant to this exemption to three artificial
or prerecorded voice calls within any consecutive 30-day period; and
- requiring callers to provide
an “opt out” option for recipients of such calls, and to keep records and
abide by such “do not call” restrictions.
We are still reviewing the details of the final orders and
will continue to advocate for unfettered Credit Union-Member communications
wherever possible. For example, we may be able to mitigate some of the
negative impacts of these new restrictions if the FCC interprets the
restrictions to apply to 3 calls per customer on each land line,
particularly for households with multiple account holders who may receive
informational calls for different purposes.
In addition, attached you'll find FCC’s press
release and two rulemakings (Section 8 Order
regarding Exemptions and the second one on Call Blocking).