Merchant’s Text Messages Persist, Despite Certified-Letter Demand That They Stop

Sun Basket promotes its ready-to-serve meals by initiating thousands of text solicitations to cellphones and residential phones nationwide without consumers’ consent, alleged an April 16 Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint in Washington County Superior Court in Rhode Island, removed Monday (docket 1:24-cv-00186) to U.S. District Court for Rhode Island. Plaintiff Christopher Laccinole personally listed his cellphone number on the national do not call registry at least two years before he started receiving Sun Basket’s text-message solicitations, said his complaint. The Narragansett, Rhode Island, resident mailed Sun Basket a certified letter to its headquarters in San Jose demanding that the text messages stop, it said. But despite Laccinole’s “clear and unmistakable certified mail request to be left alone,” Sun Basket continued initiating additional text message solicitations to his cellphone, it said. Sun Basket used an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) with a random or sequential number generator to initiate the texts, it said. The text messages originated from SMS short code 44763, the complaint said: “A text message containing an SMS short code is characteristic of a message sent using an ATDS that dials a large volume of telephone numbers from a prepared list.” Sun Basket’s unlawful conduct demonstrates that it doesn’t maintain a written policy for maintaining an internal DNC list, nor has it “informed and trained personnel engaged in making text messages on the use of the do-not-call list,” said the complaint. Laccinole “falls in the category of consumers who seek redress to stop unwanted telephone solicitations,” it said.