Texas woman robocalled 153 times by Time Warner Cable to receive $229,500 in harassment suit

Published 12:12 pm Thursday, July 9, 2015

Araceli King is now probably glad Luiz Perez didn’t pay his cable bill. Because as annoying as they were, the 153 robocalls King received from Time Warner Cable in an attempt to collect a past due amount from Perez wound up earning King $1,500 a piece. 

Perez, as it turns out, was the previous holder of King’s cellphone number, which she told the cable company–repeatedly–to no avail.

In March 2014, King, an insurance claims specialist from Irving, Texas, sued Time Warner for harassment. That didn’t stop the calls either. 

In fact, nearly half of the 153 “interactive voice response” calls–and the accompanying messages—came after King had filed suit. 

For US district judge Alvin Hellerstein, that’s what did it. 

On Tuesday, he awarded King triple damages totaling $229,500 for the “egregious violations” of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. 

“Defendant harassed plaintiff with robocalls 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,” Hellerstein wrote in his decision on the case.

Time Warner had argued that since Perez had consented to being contacted via its automated response system, it wasn’t liable under the act—an argument the 73 post-suit calls rendered plainly invalid. 

Luis Perez could not be reached for comment.