Online College Harms ‘Thousands' With Its Unwanted Marketing Calls: Class Action
Full Sail University, a private for-profit college, hired a Florida call center vendor, the Office Gurus, to place unsolicited marketing calls to promote its online course work, “harming thousands of consumers in the process,” alleged plaintiff Kristy Beckwith’s Telephone Consumer…
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Protection Act class action Friday (docket 6:24-cv-00136) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando. Full Sail, specializing in entertainment, media and emerging technologies degrees, is in Winter Park, Florida. Many of the defendants’ TCPA violations “were knowing, willful, and intentional,” and they failed to “maintain procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such violation,” said the complaint. Beckwith's cellphone number has been listed on the national do not call registry since July 25, yet the Office Gurus phoned the South Dakota resident at least five times on Full Sail’s behalf beginning Aug. 6, and the calls persisted at least through Sept. 2, it said. At no point in time did Beckwith provide the defendants with her express written consent to be contacted, it said. The unsolicited calls caused her “actual harm,” including “invasion of her privacy, aggravation, annoyance, intrusion on seclusion, trespass, and conversion,” it said. The calls also inconvenienced Beckwith “and caused disruption to her daily life,” it said. Beckwith estimates that she spent “numerous hours” investigating the unwanted calls, including trying to learn who the defendants were and how they got her number, said the complaint. The “cumulative effect” of unsolicited calls and voicemails like those attributable to the defendants “poses a real risk of ultimately rendering the phone unusable for other purposes as a result of the phone’s memory being taken up,” it said.