What’s more annoying than getting a robocall? Getting a robocall from your cable company. And what’s even more annoying than that? Getting more than 150 robocalls from your cable company after you’ve repeatedly told them to stop. Irving, Texas resident Araceli King received 153 robocalls from Time Warner Cable in just one year on her cell phone that were intended for someone else. The calls didn’t stop even after she pleaded with Time Warner Cable to end them, but Reuters reports that King this week finally achieved a measure of justice for the constant barrage of calls she had to endure over the span of a year.
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A Manhattan federal judge ruled this week that Time Warner Cable must fork over $229,500 to King to compensate her for a year’s worth of aggravation. Time Warner Cable’s defense was, shall we say, not strong: It said it wasn’t liable for the robocalls sent to King because it sincerely believed that it was sending them to a customer named Luiz Perez, who previously had King’s cellphone number and who had consented to receive the calls.
This obviously didn’t hold water because the calls continued even after King informed Time Warner Cable of its mistake. Not only that, but the calls even continued after King filed a lawsuit against the company. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein was absolutely aghast at Time Warner Cable’s overall ineptitude.
“Defendant harassed plaintiff with robo-calls until she had to resort to a lawsuit to make the calls stop, and even then TWC could not be bothered to update the information in its IVR system,” he wrote in his opinion.
While this is a particularly egregious example of TWC’s incompetence, it shouldn’t be all that surprising given the plethora of other horror stories we’ve heard about its customer service over the years.
