The Missouri Attorney General's office has filed a federal lawsuit against Charter Communications (NASDAQ: CHTR), alleging the MSO made "thousands" of illegal telemarketing calls to state residents.
State Attorney General Chris Koster said Missouri residents received as many as five calls a day from Charter reps hawking video, Internet and telephone services. The calls -- which included state residents listed on the National Do Not Call Registry -- were in violation of federal telemarketing laws, he said.
Charter spokesman Justin Venech told FierceCable in an email that it's not the company's policy to call consumers listed on the do-not-call list.
"If such calls were made, it was an error and will be fixed," he said.
The suit includes testimony from consumers such as Eugene Deslitch of Western Missouri, who said that he received 41 telemarketing calls from Charter from the time he cancelled his service in June 2014 to last January. Another resident, Stacey Williams of St. Louis, said she was receiving as many as five calls a day from the MSO.
The Missouri complaint follows a similar suit filed against Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) in Illinois. In January, a federal court in Springfield, Ill., found that Dish made "tens of millions" of calls in violation of do-not-call laws. The case was filed in 2009 by the Justice Department on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission. The plaintiffs have won a summary judgement.
For more:
- read this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story
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