Well, not completely silent. I still hear from family and friends, but I have not had a single telemarketing call or call that has shown up from someone named “Unavailable” on my Caller ID since I filed a complaint with the FCC back in June.

I had long suspected that nearly all the telemarketing calls I was getting were somehow connected to CitiMortgage. We refinanced our home a couple of years back, and although we did not contact CitiMortgage for the refinance, our mortgage was sold to them soon after we closed the deal.

It wasn’t too long after our mortgage was sold to CitiMortgage that we started getting telemarketing calls. We had signed up for the national “Do Not Call” registry some years earlier and hardly ever got any type of telemarketing calls. Until our mortgage was sold to CitiMortgage that is!

You can read a little about my experiences with telemarketing and CitiMortgage here.

My previous efforts to get the FTC to take action on this were fruitless. As best as I could figure out, they do not actually enforce “Do Not Call” violations, but will make any reports from consumers available to law enforcement agencies if they are asked. Gee, that’s a big help.

Back in June I was prompted to devote more effort towards finding out if the “Do Not Call” law has any teeth at all. We were starting to get phone calls again with “Unavailable” showing up in the name section of the Caller ID. At first we just let the answering machine handle them, which always results in an immediate hang-up by the telemarketer. We thought they would give up after three or four attempts to reach a live person. We were mistaken.

This time I’m in the garage under the dashboard of my truck trying to figure out why the brake lights are not working. The phone rings. Since the old phone in the garage has no Caller ID, I run into the house from the garage after extricating myself from under the dashboard of the truck.

When I reach the telephone in the house, I see a familiar number. It’s the same one that has been coming up with “Unavailable” for the past week or two. It does however display the phone number: 866-266-9317.

This time, after being interrupted in the middle of working on my truck in a rather uncomfortable and awkward position, and running into the house to see who was calling (my wife was out at the time so I more-or-less had to see who it was in case she was trying to reach me) I was anything but happy.

I picked up the phone and the person on the other end asked for me by name. I told him that he has reached the right person, and he then proceeded to tell me he was calling on behalf of CitiMortgage and launched into his spiel regarding home warranties or something to that effect.

This was the same crap I was getting back in January, which made this call the second violation of the “Do Not Call” laws since I informed them last summer that I no longer wanted to be contacted. At that time, I informed the company that called “on behalf” of CitiMortgage as well as CitiMortgage and was told by CitiMortgage that I would not be contacted by phone again.

I informed the caller of this fact and told him that I was going to file a complaint. He quickly ended the call at that point, and I decided to begin scouring the internet to see if I could find an agency that could actually do something about this harassment.

Once again, the FTC site confirmed that they continue to be an agency lacking teeth when it comes to enforcement. I filed a complaint on their website anyway, just to cover all the bases.

After a little more digging, I discovered the “Do Not Call” section of the FCC website. This one seemed much more promising and actually had language that suggested there could be prosecution involved! This is what I had been looking for.

The form on the FCC site required more information than the one on the FTC site and when I was done filing my complaint, I was actually given an official-looking “complaint reference number.” Although the language was a bit unclear about whether there would actually be a prosecution, it was a lot more promising than what I was left with after filing my complaint at the FTC site.

I really don’t know if my complaint to the FCC has anything to do with it, but the phones have fallen silent here as far as telemarketing and other suspicious calls are concerned, which further convinces me that CitiMortgage was behind the sudden resumption of telemarketing calls after years of receiving virtually none.

I’m really hoping that someone is going to be hit with a fine over this one — preferably CitiMortgage. One violation of the “Do Not Call” laws after being told we did not want to hear from them was bad enough, but two is really pushing it beyond the limit.

Perhaps a hefty fine will help them improve their record-keeping where “Do Not Call” requests are concerned. I’m encouraged to see that sometimes action actually is taken with regard to “Do Not Call” violations, so maybe there is hope that my efforts to file a complaint were worthwhile.

If you would like to file your own “Do Not Call” complaint with the FCC, please visit:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/donotcall/

Tags: CitiMortgage, FCC, FTC, Telemarketing, Violation