District Court (Pa.) Echoes Earlier M.D. Pa. Case Holding Debt Collection Calls to 1-800 # Exempt from TCPA

In Roy v. Dell Financial Services, LLC, 2013 WL 3678551 (M.D.Pa. 2013), Judge Caputo held that calls to an 800 # for the purposes of debt collection are not subject to the TCPA.

The TCPA was “[e]nacted in 1991 as part of the Federal Communications Act” to “deal with an increasingly common nuisance—telemarketing.” ErieNet, Inc. v. Velocity Net, Inc., 156 F.3d 513, 514 (3d Cir.1998). Roy claims that DFS’s unauthorized and repeated calls to his “1–800” number violate the TCPA, which, in pertinent part, states:  It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, or any person outside the United States if the recipient is within the United States, to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express content of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular phone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call.  47 U.S.C. § 227(b)(1)(A)(iii).FN3 Roy alleges that DFS has called his “1–800” number using an automatic telephone dialing system or pre-recorded messages over 1,000 times without his consent since September 2010. (Doc. 1 at ¶¶ 15, 18–20, 24–25.) He also alleges that he is charged a fee any time a call is made to his “1–800” number. ( Id. at ¶ 22.) Roy further alleges that these calls were an attempt to collect consumer debt from him which he incurred by purchasing computers that were primarily used for personal purposes. ( Id. at ¶¶ 13–14.) However, “the FCC has determined that all debt-collection circumstances are excluded from the TCPA’s coverage.” Meadows v. Franklin Collection Serv., Inc., 414 F. App’x 230, 235 (11th Cir.2011); see also Gager v. Dell Fin. Serv., LLC, No. 11–CV–2115, 2012 WL 1942079, at *6 (M.D.Pa. May 29, 2012) (“The FCC has ‘unequivocally stated’ that ‘calls solely for the purpose of debt collection are not telephone solicitations and do not constitute telemarketing’ and ‘calls regarding debt collection … are not subject to the TCPA’s separate restrictions on ‘telephone solicitations.’ ”) (quoting Meadows, 414 F. App’x at 236). Accordingly, Roy’s TCPA claim will be dismissed pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim.