Comenity Bank Facing Class Action Over Alleged Practice of Placing ‘Urgent’ Robocalls to Debtors’ Friends, Family [UPDATE: DISMISSED BY PLAINTIFF]

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Comenity Bank has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit over its alleged practice of repeatedly robocalling the family and friends of debtors with what it claims are “urgent messages.”

The plaintiff claims to be a party who’s received an ostensibly urgent call from Comenity that was in truth nothing more than a garden-variety debt collection call. Over the course of a typical call, Comenity attempts to create a false sense of urgency in order to panic family members and friends “with the hopes that they will call the alleged debtor and further instill panic in them,” the case alleges. What this actually does, according to the plaintiff, is make it so that family and friends “feel harassed and demand that the alleged debtor resolve the debt” to end the communications.

According to the 20-page suit out of Florida, Comenity’s conduct is nothing more than a “tool to humiliate and embarrass” alleged debtors, not to mention to “cause aggravation and annoyance to their relatives and friends.” As the suit tells it, Comenity has a department of employees tasked solely with tracking down supposed debtors’ friends and family members “just so it can illegally roboblast” them with phone calls.

In addition to alleging violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the suit claims Comenity’s apparent robocalls run afoul of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in that they’re placed by way of an automatic telephone dialing system for non-emergency purposes.