Texas Real Estate Firm ‘Routinely Violates’ TCPA, Alleges Class Action
A real estate firm headquartered in Cypress, Texas, “routinely violates” the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by delivering advertisement or marketing text messages to residential cellphone numbers listed on the national do not call registry without the prior express invitation or…
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permission required by the TCPA, alleged Kellie Banfield’s class action Thursday (docket 5:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in San Antonio. The firm, Lone Star Buyers, also violates the TCPA by failing to identify the names of the individual caller and the person or entity on whose behalf the call is being made and a phone number or address where the person or entity may be contacted, said the complaint. Banfield listed her cellphone number with the DNC registry in 2009, “and has maintained that registration through the present date,” it said. Yet starting Nov. 17, the San Antonio, Texas, resident received at least four text messages from Lone Star, each seeking to solicit her to use firm to sell her house, it said. Banfield didn’t recognize the sender, and wasn’t looking to sell her home, said the complaint. Lone Star “seeks to supplant the role of a traditional real estate agent” while providing the same services, it said. In exchange for doing so, Lone Star is “compensated by obtaining a homeowner’s property at a reduced price, and thereafter selling it at an inflated price,” it said. The firm also collects “motivated seller consumer data and resells that information to investors, including by way of executing assignment contracts,” said the complaint. Banfield didn’t give Lone Star “prior express invitation or permission” to send marketing text messages to her cellphone number, it said. She suffered “actual harm as a result of the text messages at issue in that she suffered an invasion of privacy, an intrusion into her life, and a private nuisance,” it said, She suffered additional harm “due to her frustration and difficulty in identifying the entity and persons responsible” for the unwanted text messages to her cellphone number, it said. Lone Star knew, or should have known, that Banfield registered her cellphone number with the DNC registry, it said.