Do Not Call - Does Crime Pay?
The FTC recently settled with DirectTV over it’s calling of costumers on the Do Not Call list.
Kevin Drum uses some back of the envelope calculations to estimate that, if you’re a corporate wrongdoer with good lawyers, crime does pay:
At the same time, though, it’s worth noting that they apparently received 1.4 million complaints about DirecTV, so that’s only about four bucks per complaint. And at a rough guess that fewer than one in ten people complains when they get a call, that’s less than 40 cents per illegal call. And it took DirecTV 485 days just to start talking to the FTC, let alone settle. And I’ll bet they raked in more than $11,000 per day in business from their illegal calls during the period they were telling the FTC to pound sand.
Maybe crime pays after all.
UPDATE: It looks like Kevin has revised his numbers.