Contact:
Jeannette Boccini
The
Krantz Group, Inc.
(212) 891-7234
(jboccini@krantzgroup.com)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, DC -- April 7, 1999 -- A woman who stood up against intrusive telemarketing will be honored at a ceremony that spotlights privacy violators and individuals who have fought back. Diana Mey of Wheeling, WV is a finalist for the ``Orwell Big Brother Awards,'' to be announced tonight at the ninth annual conference on Computers, Privacy & Freedom. Organized by watchdog group Privacy International and held in the U.S. for the first time, the awards highlight the invasive activities of governments and companies worldwide, as well as lauding those who have resisted their efforts.
In December Mrs Mey first learned through the Internet that Federal regulations prohibit persistent telemarketing after a resident tells the company to stop calling. From the web site Junkbusters.com she printed out Junkbusters's Anti-Telemarketing Script, which includes an instruction to place the phone number on the company's "Do Not Call" list. ``After a few months of using the script, most of the calls stopped,'' said Mrs Mey. But one company, American Home Improvements Products Inc. (AHIP) of Monroeville, PA, kept on pushing vinyl siding and other products from Sears Home Central. ``I thought that they would comply with the law,'' said Mrs Mey. ``But they just kept on calling even after I told them not to.'' When one of telemarketers who called admitted that the Meys' number was already on AHIP's Do-Not-Call list, Mrs Mey decided to start documenting the incidents. She recorded some of the calls, which is legal in her state.
After writing letters and waiting for months, Mrs Mey eventually filed in her local small claims court. One evening the family returned home to hear a message on their answering machine from an attorney saying the company had filed a countersuit alleging wiretapping, for $10,000 plus punitive damages. ``My husband asked me if we were going to lose the house over this,'' recalled Mrs Mey. ``Our three boys were very afraid.''
But she was not to be intimidated. Mr Jonathan Turak, a local lawyer and the father of one of the boys' schoolfriends, heard about the countersuit, which he slammed as ``malicious prosecution'' and ``abuse of process.'' AHIP settled the original suit by paying Mrs Mey $4,000 cash. The question of malicious prosecution is still open.
Junkbusters President Jason Catlett praised Mrs Mey for her ``heroic demonstration that Americans don't have to put up with the millions of junk calls that invade their dinnertime nightly.''
Junkbusters Corp. helps consumers defend themselves against intrusive marketing and protect their privacy online. At http://www.junkbusters.com the company provides extensive free resources for stopping telemarketing calls, unwanted physical mail, junk email, and commercial invasions of privacy on the Internet. Its popular Anti-Telemarketing Script can be printed from http://www.junkbusters.com/script.html on the Web.
This document is http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/nr21.html