<ul> <li>How to contact consumers — through their channel of choice — in a cost-effective manner</li> <li>Mitigating TCPA risk with vendor partners</li> <li>Dealing with consumers who flip-flop on autodialer consent</li> </ul> [toggle title="TRANSCRIPT"] <div class="transcript-scroll-box">Joey Pizzolato 00:00It's my pleasure to introduce our next presenter, Mr. JOHN reading partner in Buckley LLP, who'll be, like Marty said discussing compliance issues in regards to the TCPA such as how to contact consumers through their channel of choice in a cost effective manner mitigating risk with vendor partners and dealing with consumers who flip flop on autodialer consent. JOHN joins us with more than 20 years of experience in financial services and has held senior positions at several financial services companies where he was responsible for in house legal operations, corporate restructuring projects, and managing large scale litigation. He regularly advises banks, auto finance companies and debt purchasers and collectors on regulatory and compliance matters involving Dodd Frank Act, the CFPB and the Federal Trade Commission And other state and federal laws and requirements. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming john Redding to the stage. 01:14 Oh, thank you, Joey. Appreciate it. And thanks, everybody. For those who stuck around. I know, this is a really exciting topic. Um, you know, one of the things with TCPA and if we can get the presentation up, one of the things with TCPA when we're talking to people about it, you know, it's okay, one of the first questions we get is what is the state of play for TCPA? And it's a mess. Let's let's not kid ourselves, it is a complete mess. 01:44 We had, you know, the FCC had issued a series of rules over a number of years 2013 2015 etc. And then what happened was ACA international a large group for The debt collection industry had gone out and filed a lawsuit against the FCC, essentially challenging some of their rules. And the case ultimately ended up in the DC Circuit out in Washington DC, where many of these types of actions ended up. And the Court upheld a few things, one of which was the ability of consumers to withdraw their consent to be contacted through an autumn autodialer through any reasonable means, but they struck down a few things too. And one of the things for instance, they struck down was the FCC rule that said, you get one free shot at dialing a number. And if it's the wrong number, then Too bad the next time you call it, you will have violated the TCPA because if you think about it, if I call the wrong number, I am not calling somebody who consented to me even though I think I am calling somebody who consented So these kinds of things happened. And we started watching this get struck down. And when that happened, the other thing that got struck down was our definition of what constituted and constituted an autodialer. So we're back to the point where this is a question that we're asking and is being answered through the courts. And unfortunately, that answer differs based on the court that you're in. So we're going to talk about a few of these things. But we'll start with some of the regulatory developments that we've had in TCPA. And you can see here, the FCC has started working toward a new rule after ACC ACA International. They are continuing to do that we've seen a number of recent publications from them announcements from them about things they're working on, one of which here is the reassigned number database. The idea behind the reassigned number database is that a party who is looking to use an auto dialer will have the ability to go in prior to dialing Check the database to see, do you in fact, have the right number for the person that you're trying to call and really the way this is, I think going to work or still figuring out how it's going to work is that you will be able to go in and see whether a number that you currently have within your system for a customer from whom you've gotten consent is still with that person or has in fact that number been reassigned by the telecom. So that's the idea behind this database. What if you if you think about this, this is a pretty easy way to address the court's ruling with respect to the one free call that was struck down. Now the implication will be in the rule will require that we go out check the database and if the number is on the database, we know it is not our customer and therefore we should not be calling that particular customer using an auto dialer. So interesting. We go from the one free call rule to the zero free call rule, but we have the information that we should need. If the phone number is not in this database, then arguably, we're calling the right number. Now, there's an interesting piece here, because obviously from an operational perspective, what will this mean? It means I have to have a process to check the database. But I also need a process to verify not only that I checked the database, but that the number was not reassigned. How do I do that? That is something that we all are operationally going to have to be thinking about. The way I've thought about it is, in some ways, similar to how we handle CRA with service members. I go in, I check in the dmdc database, I look for return. If the if my customer is in the database, I know they're in the military if they're not and frequently, clients that we work with will save a copy of that return. From the MDC, there's no reason you couldn't do that with this database as well. Equally important, though, is when you go in and check the MDC for service member status, what if I get a no return? Well, our suggestion is always print that to keep the absence of return. So that you know and can demonstrate later, because damn DC is not always entirely accurate. You can demonstrate later I checked, they weren't in it, I have no reason to believe they are a service member. Therefore I did this, you could do exactly the same thing here. So from an operational perspective, this is one of the things that I think you need to start thinking about. How are we going to deploy this if in fact, we are using an auto dialer 06:45 you can see that last sub bullet there. This is the method by which the database will be populated so there will be an obligation from the telecom service provider to report the reassignment of telephone numbers by the 15th Every month talking about numbers that were reassigned in the prior month. So you can see that essentially, we're going to have a 45 day window outside 45 day window where if it happened on the first of the last month, it may not be reported till the 15th of this month. So we could have a 45 day approximate delay here. We'll see how they deal with that. I included a case here and I one of the things you know, I, I don't want to be the lawyer stands up here and talks about case law because nobody really wants to hear it. But this case was interesting only in that the court didn't allow a litigation to go forward a class action to go forward. They refused to certify the class. And the reason for that was that it was a class based on calling wrong numbers. And if you start to think about that, how do I prove you called a bunch of wrong numbers, and somebody was harmed. And what the court said was, I'm gonna have to go out, and you're gonna have to ask every single individual who the company called Whether it was really their number, are they really a customer, etc. And so the court didn't allow it. The reason this is here is the database is going to solve that problem too. And so from a civil litigation perspective, where right now, we can say, look, this is a very individualized questions. So if I have 1000 different customers who are contacted in a call campaign, which we all know would be a small campaign. Now, all of a sudden, I don't have to go ask every one of them what's happened. Instead, I just have to go to the database, I can see whether or not you were calling the wrong number. If so, all of a sudden, this class action gets a little easier. So this database has a number of potential implications that we all need to be keeping an eye on and thinking about. So, right now, there's a lot of attention on robocalling and spoofing and While, you know, we can all have our opinions, is it good or bad that nothing gets done in Washington? You can probably guess which side I come down on. But it's very interesting because on these two topics, party, the parties are in agreement. I think it was, I think it was two weeks ago. I think it was April 30. There were a series of committee subcommittee hearings on seven separate bills that have been introduced on a bipartisan basis in Washington. And rather than go through all of these, I will tell you, the two big ones are first, requiring there's a bill out there that is seeking to require telecoms, make tools available, and validate or verify the source of numbers. We were talking about this a little earlier. I get these calls on my cell phone. I don't know who it is, but I pick up and someone's speaking someone speaking Chinese It's a telemarketing call is what it is. I don't understand it. But I know that's what it is. 10:06 Everybody is tired of these, you know, for those who still have home phones, you know, we all know you get those phone calls at dinnertime and so on. And so and you don't know who it's coming from. So this combination of robo call, and then the spoofing, where again, my cell phone is 858692 is my area code. And the first three, the number of calls I get from 85869 to fill in the next four numbers is staggering. It's not coming from that number, because for anyone who's oddly curious, if you call the number back, you get the person who owns the number. I did that once you don't get whoever's calling you. So these are the kinds of things that Congress recognizes everybody is tired of, and that they want to solve. So these are some things that are coming up. How are they going to do this? One of the ways that they're talking about doing it Increasing fines. Currently, the fines for the robo calls are 1500 dollars per call. They're talking about increasing this to $10,000 per call. The interesting thing to me though, is it in typical government regulatory fashion, were breached bringing a bunch of new laws online, we're imposing new penalties. But if you go back and actually look, the Office of Inspector General did a review. And what they found was, this is all great, but we're not collecting the fines when in fact, we end up getting and finding somebody and prosecuting them. So we're putting new laws on the books, it's going to increase the fines. Is that really going to stop this? I think we're going to all have to wait and see. But again, I think the increased focus is important. You'll note I also mentioned the FCC announcing a new plan. Interestingly, that new plan, their announcement came prior To the announcements out of Congress, and yet they're incredibly consistent. And so that would certainly suggest that the FCC and Congress are in some way working together. So there's certainly more to watch and keep your eye on there. But, you know, it's again, going to be very interesting to see what's happening with Robo calling and spoofing. So litigation litigation, we have a couple topics that we're going to touch upon where I think most of the activity is happening. Have a bunch of lawsuits here, a variety of decisions. The big question that comes down when when we're defending TCPA cases on behalf of our corporate clients, one of the things that will happen is that it comes down to frequently a question of is an auto dialer determined on the basis of its use or its capacity to do something? And this was a key question in AC International and it was interesting when the oral argument happened before the court, one of the justices reached in his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, pulled out an iPhone and said, so is this an auto dialer? Because it can randomly generate numbers. And it can dial automatically. I need nap, but it'll do it. So is that an auto dialer? And that's really the one of the big key questions and unfortunately, it depends on the court you're in. So it's, it's still an open question where it's going to come down is a different excuse me, it's a difficult one to answer. 13:38 Yeah, we'll touch on some of the things that people are doing. But one of the big ones is manual dialing manual intervention has been one of the big, big issues and that we deal with on a regular basis is okay, I have you know, I have someone who's let's use default servicing I have someone in default, who is calling our customers on a collection, call. And they have a list of numbers that pop up, you know, the account pops up, and they click a button that says, dial. So what happens? Is that a manual call because they had to tell it to dial because it can't dial itself without that intervention. Or let's say it's even further, they have to log out of our system, log into a different system that does not store phone numbers and input on a, you know, a 10 key touchpad a phone number, which they see on their screen, and that will dial the phone. Is that an auto dialer? The problem for all of us right now is that the answer to that question is both Yes. And no. It just depends on the court we're in. And so that is what has made this particularly difficult. So here, remember, as we started talking about this, what we were talking about is, is it usage, or is it capacity? So the first three cases that are here are really use cases. This is where the court said, well, it has to actually Do both of these things. And that's that's a key piece here. It has to generate the numbers and it has to call them automatically. So these are if it didn't do both of those automatically. It is not an auto dialer. We don't have a TCPA. claim. Case gone move on. The problem is we have courts in the second group Glasser and Silliman, where, I don't know if a predictive dialer I can't tell you if a predictive dialer is, in fact, an auto dialer Under the TCPA. In Glasser. what they said was, well, the system can't randomly generate or engage in the random or sequential generation of numbers. Therefore, a predictive dialer is not an 80 ds. And yet, a month earlier out of New Jersey, the court said, any dialing by a predictive dialer is necessarily Random or sequential? And therefore, a predictive dialer is an eight TDs. Again, the the real challenge with a lot of this is that we just don't know the answer. And so this area is fraught with risk. We used to tell people, you know, load your autodialer with customers who you have an existing business relationship with, and why would we tell them that? Because there used to be an exception. That said, if you have an existing business relationship, yes, we would fight over what an existing business relationship is how long after, you know, say the account is closed, paid in full? How long does that last? That was the fight we had. Unfortunately, the FCC with their rules decided that they were going to remove the business relationship exception. So no longer going with our customer saves us. So again, we're starting to watch This and there was a big case that arose. It was actually here. And it was Marques crunch San Diego, and it was crunch San Diego happens to be a gym. And what they were doing was texting their own customers. And the court basically came out and said that if the dialer dials so similar to what we were talking about in silicon, if it dials a list of numbers, it is in fact in a TDs. It doesn't matter whether it generates those numbers itself or not. The interesting part was marks was on its way up to the US Supreme Court. Unfortunately, they settled it. And so currently in California and other states in the Ninth Circuit, that's the law. So we've got some challenges, few headwinds here. And I guess the reason we go through this is to make clear what What does this practically mean for us? What it means is that it is very important that we understand the technology that we are using to call people. 18:13 It is very important to understand how much if any manual intervention we have within our process. I will tell you as a as on a broad high level, the more manual intervention I have, the less risk I am probably taking on. The problem is that that is not a good general statement, because it depends on the court. So, as I was saying, but from a practical perspective, the important part here is understanding what risk we're taking on making sure that when we take this risk on, we know what risk we're taking, and that does require significant effort to understand the technology that you're using to do this. The other area that I think is particularly important is consulting. sent the FCC s rule and this part was upheld by ACA international that court is that customers have the right to withdraw their consent to be contacted through an auto dialer, by any reasonable means. What does that mean? It means if they call a branch and say they withdraw consent, you probably ought to honor it. If they send you an email, if they send you a letter, you know, whatever sort of reasonable means, you know, if, if they're sending smoke signals, probably not reasonable. But you have to start thinking about what constitutes reasonable. From a practical perspective, what this means is we need to train the people who interface with our customers, no matter where they're located. And we need to have some sort of feedback mechanism that allows us to capture the information on the withdrawal of consent because as soon as you do that, As soon as you have a withdrawal of consent, 20:03 and you don't honor it, 20:06 start running the clock and start getting the checkbook ready. There are professional plaintiffs, this is what they do. There's a guy out of Minnesota who I know this because I've run into him a few times. He literally says yes. And then I'll send something to a branch he'll find somebody who he thinks is sort of out of your mainstream operation. And he'll withdraw his consent, and then we'll file a lawsuit against him. And we've seen him he's a repeat plaintiff, we just there are these people out there. So you want to be very aware of this. It was interesting because many of us obtain consent through the application. That's where we frequently will get our first opportunity to request consent. And what ended up happening was, as that became problematic, as people were able to withdraw consent, a number of us started thinking well, why If instead, we put the consent within the credit agreement, and I would say for about a year, year and a half, we all thought that was a really good idea. And there were a few courts that came out our way. And they said, Look, it's in the contract. That means it's been negotiated. Everybody's agreed to it. And therefore, the consumer can't unilaterally withdraw their consent, it would be sort of like, I have a contract. Let's say I'm a customer, I have a contract at a 5% interest rate. It's not like you can decide that you're going to increase my interest rate to 6%. We can both agree to increase the interest rate or drop the interest rate. But I can't unilaterally do that. We tried that. It worked for a while a number of courts have said yes, it's been negotiated. Therefore, all the parties have agreed you can't have a unilateral revocation of consent because it's in the contract that would reform the contract and you can do that. Unfortunately, what's happened is personal Recently, I would say the courts are starting to swing the other direction. We're seeing more and more courts say in fact, just because it's in the contract, doesn't mean that it can't be revoked. And the reason for that is that the law itself grants the right to withdraw consent. So this is another one that unfortunately remains an open issue. As I said, the TCPA is a mess. Another one that has recently started gaining more and more traction is the question of ringless voicemail. And when you think about the complaints that we get, and that our clients get with respect to these types of calls, it's that I'm in the middle of dinner. This is the anecdotal story we hear every time my client was in the middle of dinner with their family, they only get this small amount of time with their family. And your client called them 22:58 out okay. 23:01 But if that's really what we're concerned about, then ringless voicemail seems like a really good solution. The phone doesn't ring. It just delivers a voicemail straight in customer you can pick it up anytime you want. So you control when and whether you're interrupted. Because you decide whether you're going to listen to your voicemail or not. It's a great theory it doesn't work. In fact, what's happened is courts are basically coming down and saying there's no requirement that the phone be physically ringing. That is not a requirement under TCPA. That is not part of the test. So too bad. The fact that you are calling using the auto dialer, if you don't have consent, then you have a TCPA problem. And so, unfortunately, there's not one there's also texts, you have to remember texts are considered Subject to TCP. What's going to be really interesting, and I realized this is a huge left turn, is, I think someone yesterday, in fact, I think it was a regulator panel was talking about the new debt collection rule. Yeah, I'm one of the sorry, individuals who read 530 pages. I will tell you that the interplay between that rule in the debt collection context, and TCPA is going to be very interesting to watch. So keep an eye on that, that as as the business is talking about wanting to use texts and other things in the communication channels from an FDCPA perspective, and then from a creditors perspective, we don't think of FDCPA per se, but we think of it in a YouTube context. Maybe you can do that. But don't forget the TCPA when it comes to texting because what many likes to do is of course, load a text message and blast it out. And so we just want Be careful when we're doing that. So from a practical perspective, be thinking about those kinds of issues, because those are going to become very important. What else have we got? Oh, okay. We're going to come to the end here. And then we'll open it up for questions. I think just the key takeaways, you know, these are things that we've touched upon during this talk. You got to understand your technology. Someone has to understand your technology, because you want to know at what point in the process Am I either increasing or mitigating my risk? And then the other thing that does is it helps to ask the questions, what other things can we be doing to mitigate the risk while accomplishing the business objective? I thought rich said it very well. I have been in house legal for years and years and now I'm outside. But, you know, my job was to help mitigate the risk, but it was not. It was not my decision to make. Yeah. My role is to advise. It's the best Businesses decision to make the risk decision within their business. Because without them without sales without marketing, I don't have a job. So it's my own self interest, if nothing else, so making sure that we understand what risk we're taking on. Understanding ways in which we may be able to mitigate those risks is particularly important because the business needs to understand that when they're looking at these kinds of these kinds of activities, we've talked about manual intervention. There's no magic bullet, the more manual intervention you have, probably the lower your risk profile. That said, it depends on where you are. I do believe that at a point in time this is going to be answered. I suspect it will be answered by rule out of the FCC. I think ultimately, they understand this problem. The question is, what are they going to do about it? And I wish I had an answer I don't. Consumer consent is an area that we need to be particularly focused on. As I touched upon its winner. Getting consent. And there are a number of touch points at which we can get consent. So we can get consent at the time of application, we can get consent within the credit agreement itself, we can get consent. When we're onboarding and having a welcome call. We have a number of clients who do that, what I would tell you is make sure that you have scripting, for the people making the welcome calls, so that that gets into the account notes in the way that you want it in the account notes. Yeah. Anything you can do to demonstrate that consent is great. Another thing that sometimes happens, we have some clients who 27:38 are a bit more sophisticated, they can see the number, the incoming number from which their customer calls. And if it's a number that's not in the system, they will ask, Is it okay for us to contact you on this number? Can we contact you by auto dialer on this number? Yes, you can. Okay, great. And you put that in the system here again. It's very much like the welcome call scripting that consent. And so it's a way to get specific consent as to a given number. withdrawal of consent is an interesting one. If it's in the credit agreement, we have had a number of clients who take the position that you cannot unilaterally let it go. And therefore, we can continue calling you. The one thing I would say is think about the customer experience and think about the value of actually continuing to call them through an auto dialer. If they tell you they don't want to be contacted that way, particularly if you're in a default situation. Do you really think a they're going to answer the call the call or B, you're really going to get anything out of that you need to be thinking about that your answer might be yes. You know, I'm not going to answer the question, but it's a question that you need to be thinking about. My personal opinion is no, but that's just how I would react. So you know, different people handle that differently, but it is something to be thinking about as you're going through this. The monitor During have Do not call lists. Certainly we all do it particularly when we're talking about marketing. But do keep an eye on the FCC. The FCC is they take a long time. They take a long time to do anything, but they are the party that is going to be or the regulator that is going to be addressing this, so keep an eye on them. And then finally, I think we hear this probably every presentation, every conference, every everything. consumer complaints, complaints are your single best opportunity to avoid a regulatory problem. And sometimes to avoid lawsuits. If the customer calls up had a problem with respect to use of a dialer, they don't want you calling on the dialer, but you've got the complaint. Pay attention to that because the proper handling of complaints is in our experience and it doesn't matter the topic. That's why I said every presentation every conference, handling of consumer complaints in a way that the consumer feels heard. They feel like their problem is being addressed. They don't, often they don't like the answer. But it's still helps to avoid the right the complaint to a regulator the litigation running to a plaintiff's lawyer, because at least you're listening to them. And they may not like your answer, but they understand your answer. And so I think just making sure of that is, is another aspect. That's all we've got on the presentation. Joey, I think we have some. Joey Pizzolato 30:27 So two of the most recent TCPA cases that we've reported on words and Mac and flagship, and I believe recently the court was reexamining flagships 4.4 million settlement, and to determine whether or not that was enough. This is ring a bell and all. Yeah. So my question is, Can you can you give us a little insight into maybe the regulator's thought process and why It should be this particular reexamination should be concerning for lenders. 31:05 Well, I think if we if we think about the reexamination, you know, one of one of the things we consider is doing, I do a lot of enforcement and litigation work. And when we go in and settle these kinds of matters, part of that thinking is we will not we will typically you don't admit that anything happened to frequently will neither admit nor deny and then promise not to do those things that you weren't doing 31:37 and, and pay some some amount to resolve it. 31:42 And the challenge with changing or revisiting these kinds of settlements is that I no longer you know, my, my sort of mind frame when I'm looking to negotiate this is I get that it has to be enough for the other side to feel like they've gotten a win. Now that when we frequently say, you know, both sides hold their nose and swallow hard and say, Alright, I'll do it. You know, nobody gets everything. 32:15 But my willingness to settle 32:18 is frequently tied to the certainty that comes with that settlement. So let's say, you know, using that case, 4.4 million, what if all of a sudden someone says it's, it needs to be 10? 32:32 My entire thought process changes. 32:36 And so I may not be willing to settle at that price. So I may well be willing to try that case. And so the it's the lack of certainty that for those of us who do this, that that we find problematic when the courts come back, we see this I mean, you do see this in class actions. What ends up happening in class actions is the court has the right and in fact the obligation to approve a class settlement So the parties go into court say, here's what we've agreed to bless this. 33:06 Sometimes the court Well, sometimes court won't, I 33:08 would say it's probably more frequent that they do. But once you've had that settlement, this sort of reexamination, the creation of uncertainty, it really does make litigation and enforcement more difficult, more expensive. And the ability to resolve matters becomes becomes tougher. So that's something that that we see with those 33:27 types of activities. Joey Pizzolato 33:29 So you mentioned the courts are kind of seem to be all over the place. You know, do you have a sense for when the definition of an autodialer will be settled? And what might that look like? 33:42 So the answer to when, when it might be settled, unfortunately, the answer is no, I don't know. I do think as I mentioned, the FCC is going to be who is going to resolve that. I think ultimately, they're going to have to be as we saw an ACA International. They tried It was struck down, I have to think that 34:06 manual intervention 34:08 to me is, is probably going to be the big key. And, you know, we sometimes talk about it internally at the firm. 34:18 I don't always need the right rule. 34:21 But it's good to have a rule. And so 34:23 if someone could actually define what we can do and what we can't do that, that may not be a bad thing. 34:31 And so I think it's going to come out of the FCC. I really do. 34:36 And we hope that there will be some certainty around it. 34:39 But timing on the FCC, they've, you know, they've been talking about a new rule now for two years. 34:47 And I don't know that they're particularly close on that one. So 34:50 it's going to be a while I do think manual intervention is going to be a part of it. I also have a suspicion that it will get a little further away from Potential capacity to actual capacity. That's one of the arguments that we get into as well. I may have a system that could, if I did certain things, let's say randomly generate numbers. But because of the way I've implemented it, it cannot. Unfortunately, for many courts, the potential the capacity is where the court stops its analysis. So I have a feeling that that's another aspect of a rule that we may see that the system has to have a current capacity, even if it's not an actual use, but it has to have a current capacity in its current form as implemented within the within the company. Joey Pizzolato 35:39 And you you mentioned the FCC and congressional activity around robo calls and a number spoofing. Do you believe those two organizations are working together or are they two separate efforts? 35:52 I have to say, I mean I i do think that they're at least coordinating if if not working together. You know, when you Look at some of the similarities between the FCC announcement with respect to the increasing of fines. And 36:05 then you look at the recent 36:06 legislation that was introduced on the bipartisan basis, they both get to the same place. When you look at the database that we were talking about the reassigned number database, they get to the same place, when you look at what they were talking about with respect to the the burden or the responsibility that will be placed on the telecoms with respect to the authentication of numbers, same place. So I do think it's at the very least a coordinated effort and and to be honest, I'm glad that it is. One of the things we always worry about is here's the law and here's the rule. I'm not sure what what what the agency was thinking when they had a rule that says this, but the law says something else. So some level of coordination is probably going to be helpful and I do think that it's going on, okay. Joey Pizzolato 36:58 One from the audience can lenders safely utilize data entry staff to dial numbers to quote down numbers that when the phone is answered feeds to an agent 37:10 if I understand the question correctly, so so a member of staff picks up the telephone outside picks up, but actually physically dials a telephone and then feeds that in. So it's a live person and then feeds that to 37:28 another representative within the company. If that's the question. That's my understanding. Okay, then then I would say yes, that sounds like it is one of the you know, there's a case that's going right now where the argument is, even that is problematic. And the argument is because while the staff person puts in the phone number they put in the phone number that is then automatically dialed by the computer. My take on this is as As long as we're not using the predictive dialing system, and this truly is a call originating through it through a key entry, and it's a live person doing it, and if the person on the other end answers either that person says please hold for someone else, or alternatively someone else picks up such that it's not thrown autodialer. That should be that's probably about as safe as you're going to get. I would not say it's without risk. One of the things that courts have said is that the even if there if there is a slight delay, between pickup and a person answering So in other words, I'm the customer, I pick up the phone, there's a delay, and then an associate gets on the phone with me for purposes of a motion to dismiss the early stage getting rid of a lawsuit. I if I talk about that delay, that can be enough to get me past a motion to dismiss because it indicates that there may be a dialer involved. So The reason I raised that is I don't want I don't want you to go away with the idea that somehow this is safe. I think what it what it's about is is minimizing the risk to the extent that you can. It's not going to stop lawsuits necessarily. It's not going to stop complaints. But I do think all of that helps. Joey Pizzolato 39:20 Okay. Well, I think we're pretty much out of time. But thank you so much, john, for joining us and everyone. Please join me in thanking john. Thank you. </div> [/toggle]
