Verizon Wireless continued its relentless campaign to protect its end users’ privacy under any circumstances and announced that it is has filed lawsuits in the New Jersey Superior Court against three companies for illegally and irresponsibly marketing their offerings to its customers and staff via automatic dialing telephony without prior consent from end customers, or contractual agreement with Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless.

It identified the offending rogue agencies as Dealers Warranty (doing business as Federal Auto Protection) and National Dealers Warranty from Missouri, and Tele Europe, B (News - Alert).V., from the Netherlands.

"Telemarketers continue to harass our customers with these pitches for extended auto warranties, among other offers," said Steven E. Zipperstein, vice president and general counsel of Verizon Wireless. "Whatever it is they are selling, these unlawful telemarketing calls are an annoyance to our customers and invade their privacy, and we will continue using all the legal weapons in our arsenal to stop this activity and protect our customers."

The lawsuit lists offences against the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act that states it is against the law to contact wireless numbers via automatic dialling methods, and cites breach against state fraud and privacy laws. Company sources say that by filing the lawsuit and naming John Does as defendants, it will be able to use the discovery process to help identify the currently unknown telemarketers and to get them to halt their practices.

What is seriously amazing is that all three apparently different companies, one from a different continent, use exactly the same duping method for targeting unwary and potential customers. The unlawful attempts always start with Verizon phone users receiving a previously recorded voice message informing them that a car warranty time frame is about to come to an end and that they should press ‘1’ to speak to a rep.

On activating ‘1’, the automatically contacted rep then refuses to divulge exact company information and instead respond in a vague and roundabout manner. Any attempt by Verizon Wireless’ employees or customers to dial back the received telephone call-back number from the caller identification menu is answered with a pre recorded message informing them that the call was received in error.

The company says that it uses lawsuit compensation on behalf of its customers to financially assist domestic violence prevention, law enforcement and other non-profit organizations. TMCnet had earlier reported that Verizon’s HopeLine program adds value to the environment and to the domestic violence victim’s support cause.