ABA Urges FCC to Require Notification When Bank Calls Are Blocked

Marlene H. Dortch, Secretary
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Room TW-A325
Washington, DC 20554

The American Bankers Association, ACA International, American Association of HealthcareAdministrative Management, American Financial Services Association, Consumer BankersAssociation, Credit Union National Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, NationalAssociation of Federally Insured Credit Unions, and the Student Loan Servicing Alliance (the“Associations”) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the draft Third Report and Orderreleased on June 25, 2020 (Draft Order). The Draft Order provides a safe harbor for telephonecompanies (voice service providers) that block calls based on “reasonable analytics designed toidentify unwanted calls,” as long as the analytics incorporates call authentication informationinto the blocking decision.

This letter also serves as notice of ex parte telephone calls with Zenji Nakazawa, Public Safetyand Consumer Protection Advisor to Chairman Ajit Pai on June 30, 2020, and with Arielle Roth,Wireline Legal Advisor to Commissioner Michael O’Rielly on July 1, 2020. The participants tothe meetings are identified in the appendix attached to this letter.

The Associations share the Commission’s goal to eliminate illegal automated calls. At the sametime, it is critical that the Commission’s rules governing call-blocking practices protectconsumers from the risk that they might not receive important, often time-sensitive, calls fromhealth care providers, finance companies, banks, credit unions, other participants in the financialservices marketplace, retailers, and other legitimate businesses. When outbound calling numbersused by legitimate businesses are mislabeled, or calls from those numbers are blocked,consumers are harmed because they may not receive lawful calls affecting their health, safety, orfinancial well-being. These calls include, for example, safety alerts, fraud alerts, data securitybreach notifications, product recall notices, healthcare and prescription reminders, power outageupdates, and other necessary account updates needed to maintain financial health. It is critical forconsumers that these calls be completed without delay, and that the caller and call recipient arenotified immediately when a call is blocked. When those calls are blocked, the Commission’srules should ensure that businesses can promptly have the block removed.

We offer the following comments that, if adopted, would strengthen the Draft Order’sprotections for both consumers and callers.

Summary of Comments

We appreciate that the Draft Order mandates that voice service providers provide a single pointof contact on their websites, resolve disputes within a reasonable amount of time, and promptlyremove blocks where there is erroneous blocking. However, for this redress mechanism tomeaningfully protect consumers and be effective as Congress intended, the caller must know thatits calls are being blocked. Consequently, we urge the Commission to require the blocking entityto notify callers immediately that it is blocking their calls. Without a notification requirement, nocall-blocking service can be performed with “transparency . . . for . . . callers,” as the TRACEDAct requires.

We also ask that the Commission take the following steps to strengthen the ability of the DraftOrder to protect consumers against illegal calls and ensure that all stakeholders have theincentive to avoid over-blocking time-sensitive, legitimate calls on which consumers rely today:

• The Commission should require a voice service provider to remove an erroneous blockwithin 24 hours of the provider’s learning of the block.
• The Commission should clarify and confirm that a terminating service provider thatblocks calls is prohibited from imposing a charge on callers for reporting, investigating,resolving, and, as appropriate, removing erroneous blocks promptly.
• The Commission should confirm that the obligation on terminating voice serviceproviders to provide callers with effective redress options applies equally to mislabeledoutbound calling numbers.
• The Commission should confirm that implementing the required redress mechanism is acondition of receiving the protections of the safe harbor.

In addition, terminating voice service providers should not be able to block a fully authenticatedcall unless the provider can determine with a high degree of certainty that the call is unlawfulthrough application of objective, defined criteria, and after investigation into the call.

Download the comment letter to read the full text.