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Report: FCC Failing To Resolve Consumer ComplaintsAgency spars with investigators over allegations of poor follow-through |
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By Martin H.
Bosworth March 14, 2008
Even as the agency often supports preempting state laws enabling investigation and enforcement of consumer complaints, it offers itself up as the means for frustrated citizens to demand action on issues ranging from identity theft to bad cable service. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) alleges that the FCC may receive hundreds of thousands of complaints, but does a poor job of following through and tracking them to resolution. According to the GAO, though the FCC processed 95 percent of the complaints it received, opened up 46,000 investigations, and closed 39,000 between 2003 and 2006, 83 percent of the cases were closed without any enforcement action. "[The] FCC has not set measurable enforcement goals, developed a well-defined enforcement strategy, or established performance measures that are linked to the enforcement goals," the GAO said. "Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program." Among the GAO's findings:
The FCC offered a 109-page response to the GAO report, questioning the GAO's methodology and conclusions while trumpeting its own achievements in handling consumer complaints. The FCC said it had collected $65 million in fines, forefeitures, and fees since the beginning of current chairman Kevin Martin's tenure, and now "responds to 100 percent of consumer complaints." "During Chairman Martin's tenure, the Commission has implemented standardized enforcement performance goals to better manage the enforcement process and automate portions of this process," Enforcement Bureau chief Kris Monteith said. House probeThe GAO report comes on the heels of the continuing investigation of the FCC by the House Energy & Commerce Committee over charges that the agency has not been acting to handle consumer complaints in a timely fashion. Commerce Committee chairman John Dingell said that "When more than 80 percent of complaints investigated by the FCC are closed without any meaningful enforcement action, and it isn't possible to determine why no action was taken, then it appears that the FCC has abdicated its duty to protect consumers." The GAO report was commissioned at the behest of Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), in his capacity as Telecommunications Subcommittee chairman for the House Energy & Commerce Committee. Markey issued a response to the report, stating that "Without an effective FCC enforcement program, consumers are left out in the cold." "[T]he GAO's report makes clear that any legislation establishing national consumer protection rules for the wireless market, must have meaningful, supplementary enforcement at the state level. Unfortunately, solely relying upon FCC enforcement for consumer protection is utterly unreasonable in light of the GAO's findings," Markey said. Markey had recently introduced legislation to strengthen consumer protection laws on the state and national level for wireless communications providers, including a stronger enforcement role for the FCC. He also introduced a bill guaranteeing that Internet users could access all content equally under the "net neutrality provision," which tasks the FCC to investigate claims of content blocking by service providers. Report Your Experience
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