vicidial.org

by **garski** » Tue Sep 03, 2013 10:42 pm

This would be implemented soon, about the new TCPA rules on Oct 16, 2013 onwards regarding autodialing that needs written consent. This would probably affect small call center business and businesses that used Vicidial or any autodialing software.

Any inputs or workaround with this?

by **mflorell** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 5:26 am

We are working on integrating with DNC.COM's daily updated phone number prefix services for this. It isn't cheap, but it's something that will allow for pre-filtering of lists to enable you to filter out all cellphones from a list and place them into a different list for manual click-to-dialing, or just filter them out from auto-dialing.

We have a prototype working now that can scrub and update 6 million leads in 8 hours, but we are working on a faster, more robust solution. We should be announcing something by the end of next week.

by **garski** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 12:03 pm

That's a nice feature, does the Vicidial users require to purchase something to DNC com or to Vicidial?

From what you are saying is that autodialing can only be used only on residential lines or used manual-preview dialing on either residential or mobile lines, correct me if I'm wrong.

by **mflorell** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 7:03 pm

Yes, this would require a contract with DNC.com to receive their daily cellphone files. It's a few hundred dollars a month, available in yearly contract terms. Expensive compared to the cost of Vicidial, but very cheap compared to the $16,000 per violation fine for auto-dialing a cellphone(mobile phone) after October 15th from the FCC.

by **garski** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 10:54 pm

Okay, that is reasonable.

But from the other point of view, would it be possible to not detect an autodialer if you reduce your dialing ratio and have a drop percentage of 0%?

Is it also possible to do a preview dialing to mobile phones? As it will also record a ringing tone that would show that is dialed manually right?

by **mflorell** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:34 am

Technically, ratio dialing with a drop rate of 0 might be interpreted as auto-dialing. There is no problem with preview dialing or standard click-to-dial manual dialing of cellphones because that requires "human intervention" to place each phone call, and that is the test defined in a 2007 court case for whether the call was "automated" or not.

by **garski** » Thu Sep 05, 2013 11:50 am

Okay. Thanks for the reply Matt. Appreciated it.

by **garski** » Mon Sep 16, 2013 12:02 pm

Hi Matt,

Has this been updated already?

by **mflorell** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 8:45 am

Just when I think I'm finished I find something else to add. I'm working on it, and was working on it all weekend. We will have something released by the end of the week.

by **mflorell** » Sun Sep 29, 2013 6:39 am

The code for this was committed last Monday, and we have successfully tested it in production on several client systems on our Vicihost platform. For more information, read the doc explaining it all,

http://www.vicidial.org/docs/CELLPHONE_ ... LIANCE.txt

by **williamconley** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 4:48 pm

mflorell wrote:Yes, this would require a contract with DNC.com to receive their daily cellphone files. It's a few hundred dollars a month, available in yearly contract terms. Expensive compared to the cost of Vicidial, but very cheap compared to the $16,000 per violation fine for auto-dialing a cellphone(mobile phone) after October 15th from the FCC.

I'm pretty sure we could offer this as an "a la carte" service for smaller companies at 10 checks per penny. IE: 100,000 calls = $100.00 pay as you go. If you make more than 100,000 calls per month, it would be debatable if this was a good deal. However, it would be a complete solution (we'd install the linking software to our system and the logic on your system to not call cells, single solution) for those who start with a $200 deposit against future usage.

However: I found the Neustar Wireless Portability list pricing to be an "annual" pricing not a monthly, I could not find a monthly pricing fee on the DNC.com site. Note that this is merely to identify numbers true present phone company.

http://www.tcpacompliance.us/content/tcpa_pricing.pdf

Shows $1185 per top-level subscription per year and $750 per mid-level subscription to the wireless portability database. Annual. And each company would be required to pay the annual fee unless it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of another company or NOT making phone calls. (IE: If you are the one making calls under this model, you'll need to pay the $750).

Our method would be completely outside this model (not involving DNC.com or Neustar!) and would be more simply priced. But could conceivably come to more than $750 per year for larger customers.

Determination of whether the presently owning company is a cell phone or landline is still required (and I presume that is what Matt's new software is designed to do). We handle this as well with software we built quite some time ago, but would modify it to fit this new solution, which, as I said, would not include DNC.com or Neustar's database. We perform the same type of service, but we do so through normal channels directly through our telco instead of Neustar (All telco's have access to this same data as a requirement of being a telco). While they cannot share the full database (that would violate their telco rules), they ARE able to share the data one record at a time upon request. Which is where we come in. We would query one at a time and then our software will determine "cell vs landline" and either terminate the call or complete the call as appropriate. It's a rewrite of an older application we wrote for several clients years ago (still in operation, I presume, but it had a completely different purpose back then!),

by **williamconley** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 5:11 pm

mflorell wrote:Technically, ratio dialing with a drop rate of 0 might be interpreted as auto-dialing. There is no problem with preview dialing or standard click-to-dial manual dialing of cellphones because that requires "human intervention" to place each phone call, and that is the test defined in a 2007 court case for whether the call was "automated" or not.

Um ... "There is no problem with preview dialing" could be problematic in Wisconsin ...:

http://www.insidearm.com/daily/debt-col ... late-tcpa/

The Court held that because the calls to the Plaintiff were made through the dialer – and despite the human intervention of the individual collector choosing a telephone number and clicking on a screen to prompt the dialer – the Defendant violated the TCPA. The Court wrote:

Regardless whether preview dialing falls outside the scope of § 227(a)(1) and the FCC’s order, I agree with plaintiff that defendant’s argument is another red herring. Under both the statute and the order, the question is not how the defendant made a particular call, but whether the system it used had the “capacity” to make automated calls. Satterfield v. Simon & Schuster, Inc., 569 F.3d 946, 952 (9th Cir. 2009) (“[A] system need not actually store, produce, or call randomly or sequentially generated numbers, it need only have the capacity to do it.”) (emphasis added).

The Court in Nelson ultimately awarded the Plaintiff $571,000 in statutory damages for violations of the TCPA.

Unless you use the "disable auto-dialing" method this ruling clearly states that Vicidial is a violator if you call a cell phone with it. Admittedly the collection agency in this case was way over the line (called this guy's cell phone 1000 times!), but the ruling still applies an is now precedent.

by **mflorell** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 7:50 pm

If you have a smartphone you are guilty of this as well. All iPhone and Android phones have the "capacity" to auto-dial without human intervention. If you don't believe me just read the terms of service of the Facebook smartphone app. If a non-abusive case ever made it to a jury trial based only on the "capacity" argument, the lawyer for the defense just has to point out that every person in the courtroom with a smartphone is violating the law, and the defendant wins.

In discussing this with a lawyer down here in Florida that has been prosecuting cellphone cold-call violations of the TCPA for years, he told me the "capacity" argument is a loser in court for these lawsuits. If he doesn't have proof of a call made to his client being an auto-dial, or an abusive use of auto-dialing by the company, call he won't even bring a lawsuit.

As for the absolute fail-safe solution? Yes, rendering your vicidial cluster incapable of auto-dialing programmatically through the "Disable Auto-Dial" trigger will keep you in the clear as far as the TCPA is concerned. We've already talked to groups of corporate lawyers about this for a few different clients, and they are happy with how the solution works.

by **williamconley** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 9:24 pm

I'm not just worried about the honest lawyers (lol! I laughed while typing it, had to share), I'm also worried about the scammers that will file suit after their phone number "accidentally" gets on a call list or two for the sole purpose of making a living by blackmailing call centers. Many of the call center owners just don't want that litigation risk. And a precedent such as this one could certainly lead to more of these guys. I've only had to fend off a couple of them, and they've both crawled back under their rocks to be sure, but they did get close to the cash with the owners of the rooms. They offered to settle north of $1k without court ... and one of them actually filed suit to try to collect. Of course, he had no proof and lost, but this precedent could well make it possible for that same guy to be looking at a $16k payout if he produced the proof.

With this precedent in place, it becomes law. I'd be very wary of calling into Wisconsin and taking the chance of hitting a cell phone, regardless of what a Florida Lawyer says. But then I'm "compliance guy" and only usually brought in to clean up (I'm fairly famous for my "get me out of this!" moments with some medium call centers who don't want to lose that level of cash).

by **garski** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:26 pm

With this new feature of Vicidial, does it require us to use DNC.com (annual subscription) or the Neustar (what william conley mentioned) is okay to use?

Also, is this the feature we need to subscribe into? it is around $1,200 annually right?

http://dnc.com/solutions/complianceGuide/

by **williamconley** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:29 pm

I didn't find anything in that link that implied a cell phone database method. Just information compiled for compliance in general (rules to follow, not any methods to follow them).

by **garski** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 3:39 pm

Probably with this one.
https://www.dnc.com/signup/fs-signup.ad ... howall%3dt

as of now, I don't know which package should I subscribe into. on the DNC.com

by **williamconley** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 4:04 pm

That looks much more promising. But I notice two checkboxes for wireless. If you get both (which don't actually specify what they are for in detail) you're at $275.00 month and have a maximum of 100,000 records.

If all you want is wireless, our plan for 10 calls per penny is about 40% of that cost. Since this does not specify the actual method of calculation or interaction or what exactly is included ... it's hard to compare, really.

If you are also looking for US National DNC scrubbing, our $300 package (installed in a Vicibox server) is a one-time fee. In any case, you must still have a SAN number and DoNotCall.gov membership/subscription for US National DNC, of course.

by **garski** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 4:16 pm

Correct me If I am wrong, the $300 package that you have is a scrubber for the DNC list right?

As of now, the new update of Matt is used to scrub Mobile vs Landline numbers so If you want to use autodial you can only use it on Landline numbers and mobile numbers would be "Manual Dial"

Yeah, seen the subscription of DNC.com, however, 100,000 records is a bit low compare to a 23Million leads that we got that we need to filter.

by **williamconley** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:05 pm

garski wrote:Correct me If I am wrong, the $300 package that you have is a scrubber for the DNC list right?

As of now, the new update of Matt is used to scrub Mobile vs Landline numbers so If you want to use autodial you can only use it on Landline numbers and mobile numbers would be "Manual Dial"

Yeah, seen the subscription of DNC.com, however, 100,000 records is a bit low compare to a 23Million leads that we got that we need to filter.

And don't forget that with either method you still must join DoNotCall.gov. With my scrubber, however, the $300 is a one-time fee and all you need to do from then on is upload the zips (from donotcall.gov) into the interface on your Vicidial server. Vicidial scrubs at night with no further involvement.

And the wireless vs landline is an add-on not related to the DNC washer. Admittedly we have not finished building the wireless package yet because no one has signed up, but at the end of the day $300 one time fee plus 10 calls per penny is much more reasonable than $275/month. IMHO. 8-)

by **garski** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 5:08 pm

yeah. Do you happen to have a demo on that. Oct 16 is getting nearer and we need to choose the most reasonable rates.

and i don't seem to open the donotcall.gov

"Due to the Government shutdown, we are unable to offer this website service at this time. We will resume normal operations when the government is funded."

by **williamconley** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:17 pm

Why do I find that so funny. Wow. 8-)

by **garski** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 6:26 pm

Haha yes. I was browsing on your site and I found these.

http://catalog.poundteam.com/product_info.php?products_id=520

Our method will be to identify calls to cell phone carriers even if the phone was once a landline. We will identify the Present Telco for the phone and then determining if that Telco is a Cell Phone Carrier and send a "Cell" vs "Land" signal back to your server. The dialplan we install in your server will then choose to call or not based on the result.

should we be needing to use your VoIP provider or we can use our own?

by **williamconley** » Mon Oct 07, 2013 7:48 pm

This method can be used outside the "Carrier" call. Web API based, not necessarily "Carrier" based.

by **basejumper** » Tue Oct 15, 2013 11:39 pm

Matt,

Tried to disable the autodialer per above link and the system is still autodialing? posted in support under "Disabled Autodial - Still Autodialing"

Any help is appreciated...

by **mflorell** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 5:31 am

basejumper, you aren't giving us much to go on here.

admin.php version and build?

svn version?

What exactly did you do to enable the feature?

Did you enable this feature while a campaign was running?

Output from the ASTVDauto screen after you enabled it that shows it is dialing?

MySQL select from the system_settings table showing that it is properly set?

EDIT:
Looks like there might be a bug, try this query:

UPDATE system_settings SET disable_auto_dial='2';

AND, to make sure, here are some extra steps you can take:

mysql asterisk
UPDATE system_settings SET disable_auto_dial='2';
UPDATE vicidial_campaigns SET dial_method='INBOUND_MAN' where dial_method NOT IN('MANUAL','RATIO','INBOUND_MAN');
ALTER TABLE vicidial_campaigns MODIFY dial_method ENUM('MANUAL','RATIO','INBOUND_MAN') default 'MANUAL';
UPDATE vicidial_campaigns SET auto_dial_level='1' where auto_dial_level NOT IN('0','1','1.0');
ALTER TABLE vicidial_campaigns MODIFY auto_dial_level ENUM('0','1','1.0') default '0';
quit
<you can also optionally remove the adaptive eial methods from the web interface>
find /srv/www/htdocs/vicidial/ -type f -exec sed -i 's/ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT/MANUAL/g' {} +
find /srv/www/htdocs/vicidial/ -type f -exec sed -i 's/ADAPT_AVERAGE/MANUAL/g' {} +
find /srv/www/htdocs/vicidial/ -type f -exec sed -i 's/ADAPT_TAPERED/MANUAL/g' {} +

by **basejumper** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 4:16 pm

Matt,

I posted the details in the support area and responded to your questions there...missed that you had also responded here...I will move this part of the convo over there to avoid repetition. the forum thinks I am too spammy trying to post the url link to the other thread (as I am a new account)...the topic over there is "Disabled Autodial - Still Autodialing"

Sorry for the confusion!

by **kddacraker** » Wed Oct 16, 2013 5:12 pm

http://catalog.poundteam.com/product_in ... cts_id=520

is that gonna really work ?

any demo ???

by **mflorell** » Thu Oct 17, 2013 6:09 am

We posted some fixes for this to the svn/trunk, as well as some other general fixes. If you are using this feature you should upgrade.

by **telecomdude1776** » Sat Oct 19, 2013 5:12 pm

If what you find isn't the right solution for you 1 of my carriers will be releasing a new service probably this week
that blocks all Cell Phone NPA/NXX codes so it's an excellent solution to the new 10/16 compliance law.

Hope this is a help for some who have major concerns.

Jay Adams
888-632-4228

by **mflorell** » Sat Oct 19, 2013 5:28 pm

No, that's not an excellent solution if they only block the NPA-NXX. Because there are over 6 million numbers that have been ported from landline NPA-NXX number blocks that are not in those cellphone number blocks. It's not good enough to protect you from litigation unless they are using the daily updated number portability lists.

by **williamconley** » Sat Oct 19, 2013 5:36 pm

Which is why ours will (if anyone purchases it! LOL) check up-to-date porting with a real telco (since they actually have this information but are prohibited from exposing the raw data).

without making the call, because we don't yet sell minutes, just check if cell/land and respond ... and we add the necessary logic to kill the call if that's your preference.

by **telecomdude1776** » Tue Oct 22, 2013 3:25 pm

Matt,
My apologies. I should have clarified. My carrier's solution is a full, comprehensive solution that not only Blocks Cell Phone NPA/NXXs but also does a real-time Database Dip for LRN Ported #s so any cell phones that have been ported to a landline carrier will also be blocked.

To my knowledge they are the 1st to market for this All in One solution in the SIP Dialer carrier world.

There may be other solutions out or coming out but then you would have multiple entities to interface, pay, manage, etc.

Regards,

Jay Adams
AOT Telecom

by **kddacraker** » Wed Oct 23, 2013 1:38 am

I am not aware that telco can do realtime scrubbing for ported numbers, is it possible ? coz my carrier's are not providing this service...any suggestions ???

by **telecomdude1776** » Wed Oct 23, 2013 4:56 pm

kddacracker- yes about as real time as possible. The LNP Database is updated daily by Neustar and carriers can choose who they want to get the most updated LRN Dip database queries as possible. There are a few that get this data as soon as Neustar updates it and others that are 1 or 2 generations removed so not as pure, maybe a day to a week old depending on who the LRN Dip provider is.

If you need help in getting carriers with purer or the purest data possible just let me know. I have over 300 carriers I work with.

Regards,

Jay Adams
AOT Telecom, Inc.

by **Acidshock** » Wed Nov 27, 2013 7:17 pm

williamconley wrote:I'm not just worried about the honest lawyers (lol! I laughed while typing it, had to share), I'm also worried about the scammers that will file suit after their phone number "accidentally" gets on a call list or two for the sole purpose of making a living by blackmailing call centers. Many of the call center owners just don't want that litigation risk. And a precedent such as this one could certainly lead to more of these guys. I've only had to fend off a couple of them, and they've both crawled back under their rocks to be sure, but they did get close to the cash with the owners of the rooms. They offered to settle north of $1k without court ... and one of them actually filed suit to try to collect. Of course, he had no proof and lost, but this precedent could well make it possible for that same guy to be looking at a $16k payout if he produced the proof.

With this precedent in place, it becomes law. I'd be very wary of calling into Wisconsin and taking the chance of hitting a cell phone, regardless of what a Florida Lawyer says. But then I'm "compliance guy" and only usually brought in to clean up (I'm fairly famous for my "get me out of this!" moments with some medium call centers who don't want to lose that level of cash).

*Cough* Stuart Abramson *Cough*

I just want to know how they can enforce this when there is no 100% official method provided to filter out these numbers. I can understand if they added them to the donotcall.gov site and you could get it under your SAN number.

by **mflorell** » Fri Nov 29, 2013 9:59 am

you have to use a "best effort" solution, like the DNC.com prefix and Neustar number portability solution. These are 99.9% accurate and are good enough of a defense if you can prove you have processes in place to use it to filter by.

by **williamconley** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 7:35 pm

Acidshock wrote:
williamconley wrote:I'm not just worried about the honest lawyers (lol! I laughed while typing it, had to share)...

*Cough* Stuart Abramson *Cough*

I just want to know how they can enforce this when there is no 100% official method provided to filter out these numbers. I can understand if they added them to the donotcall.gov site and you could get it under your SAN number.

They can enforce it because it's a law and when you violate it you can be sued. Therefore those who sue you will be causing a judge to enforce it. Welcome to America. Get good liability insurance and be sure you are compliant with all relevant laws for what you do ... or just be sure whatever you do involves nothing "scammish" and you'll likely avoid all those pitfalls.

However: If you are operating a call center, calling numbers you got from "some guy" and playing fast and loose with any and all rules trying to "skirt" illegal ... you can expect a rude awakening. 8-)

by **telecomdude1776** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 6:40 pm

Yes, agreed on the last post by W. Conley. If they see a pattern it's then when the Fed. agencies are more likely to enforce a lawsuit or issue a fine, etc. or a suit-happy law firm initiates a lawsuit. If a Call Center uses a company that gets it's data from Neustar (which only a handful of carriers do that I know of, the rest get 2nd and 3rd generation data) and a lone example of a ported number for example that was a landline not on the DNC, but ported to a Cell company and the Call Center cannot be found to be repeatedly breaking the rules the case will be much harder in a court of law to endorce as "willful intent to violate to the law".

by **williamconley** » Thu Dec 05, 2013 8:58 pm

telecomdude1776 wrote:Yes, agreed on the last post by W. Conley. If they see a pattern it's then when the Fed. agencies are more likely to enforce a lawsuit or issue a fine, etc. or a suit-happy law firm initiates a lawsuit. If a Call Center uses a company that gets it's data from Neustar (which only a handful of carriers do that I know of, the rest get 2nd and 3rd generation data) and a lone example of a ported number for example that was a landline not on the DNC, but ported to a Cell company and the Call Center cannot be found to be repeatedly breaking the rules the case will be much harder in a court of law to endorce as "willful intent to violate to the law".

True enough. I will say that I have not seen any examples of FTC Persecution for those who try to follow the rules but get "tripped" by someone who ported a number recently. I can say, however, that I've dealt with call centers harassed by professionally litigious members of the public who loosely allow their personal cell phone "out there" and then sue when it gets called (usually preceded by a letter offering to settle for about $1k, but sometimes followed by an actual lawsuit!).

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