Our regulator has referred our company to the FTC. The problem began with a consumer complaint about the telemarketer. We had unwittingly hired a company that does robocalls. We didn’t even know they did robocalls. We thought they were doing live telemarketing for us.
That company is now facing FTC action because they impersonated themselves as providing debt reduction. We are now apparently swept up in this situation, even though we did not hire the company for debt reduction marketing.
We just terminated the robocall company. But the damage is done. Now our regulator and the FTC are doing an investigation. They are digging into every marketing program, complaint, telemarketing strategy, marketing script, policy, procedure, and media initiative.
If we had known how much of this impersonating is going on, we could have avoided this robocall company or at least made sure our third-party vendor approval process would have included procedures to evaluate such risks.
Maybe you could share some information about these impersonators so that others do not fall into a mess like ours.
How much impersonation is happening by marketers?
What can my institution do to protect itself?
