The Call Blocking & Labeling Problem Original Content from ACA Collector Magazine

By Anne Rosso May & Maria Wolvin

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

The numbers are pretty incredible: U.S. consumers received 30.5 billion robocalls in 2017—an all-time high, according to the telecommunication company YouMail. This breaks down to almost 1,000 calls placed every second, which in turn generated 4.5 million consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission last year. Of course, the robocalls tracked are a mixed bag: illegal scams and harassing telemarketing efforts alongside legitimate business calls consumers want and even request. These include not just debt collection calls, but also school closing announcements, product recall notifications and reminders to pick up your prescription at the drugstore.

The enormous quantity of robocalls makes them challenging to analyze and dissect, and effective solutions to stop illegal operators require coordination between the government, private industry and consumers.

The FTC tells consumers who get unwanted calls to hang up immediately and file complaints with the FTC and National Do Not Call Registry. It’s also prevailed upon telecom providers and software developers to help stop the deluge, resulting in the rise of hundreds of third-party call-blocking apps as well as blocking and labeling at the carrier level.

The Federal Communications Commission allows telecom providers to block calls both upon consumer request as well as those from spoofed and unassigned phone numbers. However, it’s not yet a free-for-all; the FCC cautioned that blocking calls outside of the parameters it has set may violate the Communications Act.

Josh Stevens, senior associate for Mac Murray & Shuster LLP, has worked alongside the Professional Association for Customer Engagement (PACE) to study the problem since early 2017, when initial reports of call blocking first started to trickle in. “I think that this issue is complex because it involves everyone in the telecommunication sphere,” he said. “Carriers, tech providers, people who need to make calls, people who get calls, consumer groups—it touches everyone.” And obviously when that many groups are impacted, everyone has their own perspective on what should—and should not—be done, generating a lot of back and forth conversation, hopeful proposals, failed proposals and frustration on all sides. “I think there’s also a public perception that what the collection industry and the consumer contact industry are trying to achieve is the ability to just blast consumers all the time with messages, and that’s not the goal,” Stevens said. “The goal is to be able to communicate with consumers within the bounds of the law and to maintain the integrity of the telephone network and access to the telephone network for those lawful communications. And I don’t know that that message has really gotten out.”

Maria Wolvin, ACA’s former vice president and senior counsel, regulatory affairs, pointed out that robocalls are such a hot-button issue that FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has made thwarting illegal robocalls his number-one consumer protection priority. “However, the eagerness to find solutions to this problem has led to implementation of call blocking and labeling tools in the marketplace without sufficient regard for how these tools could interfere with legitimate business communications,” Wolvin said. “As a result, legitimate businesses who rely on consumer communication are being substantially harmed without any clear recourse.”

That’s why companies like RBC Inc. and Team Recovery are seeing their lawful communications with consumers labeled as scams or even blocked outright. Wolvin noted that although the FCC has been mainly focused on call blocking technology, ACA has advocated for relief in the labeling context as well, which raises similar issues and exposes businesses and consumers to similar harms. Call labeling services use algorithms to provide consumers with information about a call so they can decide whether or not to answer. For instance, Verizon recently rolled out a free integrated tool for landline phone customers called Spam Alert, which shows “SPAM?” before a caller’s name on the caller ID display if the number matches Verizon’s spam criteria.

Verizon also has a caller ID app with a Robocall Protection feature that warns wireless customers when incoming calls are likely spam, fraud or a robocall. In comments to the FCC in January 2018, ACA wrote: “Like call blocking, while this is a laudable goal that can help protect consumers from bad actors, there is currently no regulatory framework for legitimate call originators to know how their calls are being labeled, nor how to correct any errors in the event they somehow discover an improper label has been used, such as tagging a legitimate business call as ‘scam likely.’” Additionally, even calls that are properly labeled as being from debt collectors could expose companies to Fair Debt Collection Practices Act disclosure violations.

HOW DOES THIS AFFECT DEBT COLLECTORS?

It’s difficult to precisely gauge how blocking and labeling are affecting debt collectors as there is no easy way for a company to check. Right now, blocked calls are just blocked, with no external feedback provided to the caller. Instead, debt collectors find out about it if consumers tell them or if they run test calls on personal cell phones. For the last year, ACA has been conducting an ongoing survey of its members who have discovered their calls are being blocked or mislabeled. One ACA member told us: “Consumers advised us that they saw it on their phone and suspected that we were a scam. They would refuse to verify their information so we could discuss their account.” ACA also asked members to describe any efforts to rectify discovered issues. Unfortunately, without clear mitigation options, there have only been short-term workaround attempts and direct outreach efforts have not yielded much success. ACA members have reported replacing numbers after finding out they have been mislabeled—obviously not a long-term solution—and even reaching out to the carriers to ask for help, only to get referred an ineffective support desk.

Call blocking and mislabeling have had significantly negative affects on ACA member companies, hindering communication and constructive dialogue due to first having to justify to consumers that they are a legitimate business despite a “scam likely” label.

ACA members have reported:

• “We have seen a loss of contacts along with skepticism from consumers when we do make contact.”

• “This has had a considerable impact on our ability to establish trust with the consumers so we can assist them with their debt.” • “We believe it has had a definite impact. Since we are unable to get calls through, the consumers may be placed at a disadvantage through no intent of their own.”

• “This severely impacts our business. Not many people will answer the phone after the word ‘scam’ pops-up.”

• “If this continues it will simply put us out of business.”

Engle noted that erroneous call labels have impacted her company’s employment efforts. “We are showing up as ‘scam’ when we call applicants who have sent in resumes responding to our employment ads,” she said. “I just stopped getting calls back.” Telephone communications are critical in the effective recovery of debt, but robocall processing tools have inadvertently deprived consumers of important account information, which can have serious financial consequences. “When legitimate debt collection calls are erroneously blocked or mislabeled, consumers lose access to timely, critical account information that can expose them to long-term financial harm,” Wolvin said.

Members are telling ACA that if they are unable to speak to consumers, they have to follow additional collection options, like filing lawsuits to obtain judgment for garnishment purposes. Additionally, consumers who can’t receive debt collection calls might not even know about their debt until after the collector has reported it to the credit reporting agencies.
ARE THERE ANY POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS ON THE HORIZON? Last year, when debt collectors first began to report that their legitimate business calls were being incorrectly labeled and blocked, ACA sprang into action, developing a multifaceted strategy to address this serious issue, including education, research and advocacy.

On the regulatory front, ACA filed formal comments to the FCC explaining how legitimate businesses and consumers are being harmed by the current framework, which lacks any effective mitigation mechanism. The association urged the FCC to require providers who offer call blocking services to provide an indication that a call has been blocked so companies know what’s happening to their calls. ACA also asked the FCC to offer a mechanism for callers to inquire about the status of a number and to mandate a timeframe for the unblocking of a number once verification of an error has been made, ideally within one day. ACA told the FCC: “As new technologies are used in the battle against unlawful robocalls, it’s critical that minimizing unintended consequences to legitimate callers is seen as a parallel priority.” In April, call blocking/labeling provider First Orion launched CallTransparency.com, a call management platform which aims to “help legitimate, verified brands know when their numbers have been illegally spoofed or are getting a negative reaction from individuals (e.g. high number of blocks and complaints),” according to First Orion. The platform includes First Orion’s Number Reputation Service, which monitors the “nuisance score” for callers’ phone numbers and provides periodic reports. First Orion provides services for T-Mobile, but Rip Harris, director of product management for Ontario Systems, said he believes other providers are working on similar technology. While First Orion’s efforts are a step in the right direction, Harris pointed out that the bigger problem is that there isn’t a centralized solution like this across all the carriers. Ultimately, blocking and labeling technologies like these are only short-term solutions to this problem because scammers will attempt to exploit any mitigation tools tech companies dream up. Plus, illegal spoofing, a key part of the unlawful robocall problem, makes it tremendously difficult to identify scammers.

That’s why reliable Caller ID authentication, known as SHAKEN/STIR, is expected to play a major role in curbing unlawful robocalls. Currently being tested by carriers, this robust system would allow all carriers—landline, wireless and VoIP—to authenticate callers’ identities as being legitimate and accurate.

WHAT CAN ACA MEMBERS DO?

While regulators, carriers and industry groups work to sort out a solution to this problem, debt collection industry members unfortunately have limited options. At ACA’s 2017 Fall Forum and Expo, Michelle Shuster, partner at Mac Murray & Shuster LLP and PACE general counsel, told attendees that one simple step businesses can take to help their calls go through is to make sure both their phone number and company name are being displayed accurately on caller ID. “It’s a good idea to go back to make sure your numbers are outpulsing a legitimate number—not all zeros or something else that’s not a 10-digit telephone number— because the carrier will have the ability to block those types of numbers,” she said. You’ll also want to keep an eye on the FTC’s Do Not Call and robocall complaint list, published every weekday right here: https://bit.ly/2GB6ZNh. If you start to notice your phone number showing up there, you may want to take a closer look at your calling patterns. But beyond that, the best way to make a difference is to actively monitor your contact rates and let ACA know if you see significant drops that you believe are attributed to call blocking and labeling. “We need hard data like that,” Stevens said. “Those experiences are critical for both ACA and PACE so when we meet with the FCC we can tell them what’s actually happening and back it up with numbers.”

In the meantime, Eric Snyder goes to 411.com and whitepages.com once a week to see if his company is being mislabeled, and it often is. He sends the site a request to correct the listing, and then checks back week after week to repeat the process. “It doesn’t seem like a good use of my time to play this cat-and-mouse game,” Snyder said. “I’m a small company; I have 14 employees. We’re very busy and we have limited resources to tackle something like this. These companies need to come up with some more concrete criteria before they hand out these ‘scam’ labels. We’ve been in business since 1948 and we’ve had the same phone number since they started assigning phone numbers in our area, so you’d think their algorithms would be able to tell that we are a legitimate business, doing things the right way.”

Unfortunately, the technology powering blocking and labeling software today doesn’t seem to take information like that into account. 

Anne Rosso May is editor of Collector magazine. Maria Wolvin served as vice president and senior counsel, regulatory affairs, for ACA International.