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> We propose to ban the practice of obtaining a single consumer consent as grounds for delivering calls and text messages from multiple marketers... I honestly

> We propose to ban the practice of obtaining a single consumer consent as grounds for delivering calls and text messages from multiple marketers... I honestly don't understand how this isn't already a thing. The bit about Lending Tree struck a chord with me. I tried it once. I expected offers on the screen. Instead, I immediately received text messages, emails, and phone calls from multiple lenders at the same time. I was furious at every one of them. > Caught in the middle are the innocent companies trying to sell their legitimate products to interested consumers. They want no part of fraudulent leads or fraudulent lawsuits. They’re just trying to help someone buy a home or get car insurance. No, not innocent. "Hey, I've got a get rich quick scheme! I'll give you leads for customers, but you have to call them fast before my other customers do!" Nothing innocent about that. You sign up for that, you know exactly what you are doing, and you know damn well it's wrong.

Johnny555 4y ago
And there’s a trivial solution for the lending tree scenario (I’m making a big leap of faith that consumers really want txt spam from a dozen different lenders) Instead of handing off customer contact info to a dozen different lenders, they can send the loan request to the lenders, and the lenders can send their offers back to lending tree who can then send it to the customer since the customer only authorized lending tree to contact them. Ideally lending tree would consolidate the responses so instead of a dozen txt messages, the customer receives a single one from lending tree.
- loopdoend 4y ago
  This is already a thing in the leadgen space it's called RTB. Tree has likely simply figured out that it's more profitable to sell the data multiple times. Hot leads are very valuable, especially in the pay-per-call space. Every single one of those calls the GP is complaining about likely "reached duration" and paid out to Tree. Hehe.
  - nickphx 4y ago
    Sausage factory goes brrrrrrr
- Kalium 4y ago
  The other wrinkle is that vendors don't want the broker to control the relationship. They want to have it themselves. So a big part of why companies like Lending Tree can exist is because they sell the leads and don't have to do the work of being a CRM.
  - 6510 4y ago
    They don't have to give up control, if the offer is appealing they can consent to further contact.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      control is all they have though. Big banks are behind the scene doing all the real work. All the people you talk to are doing is getting a contract signed. There are enough steps that this is valuable work that needs a lot of customer service (which is why big banks outsource it to 'independent' entities), but in the end nobody can actually give you a better rate/extra costs from the banks and credit unions already near you. The rate you care about is decided by your credit score and the current market. The closing costs are somewhat competitive, but they are in the end small. I suppose if you have really bad credit these places might find someone willing to do a risky loans (at really bad interest rates) while the local banks and credit unions won't talk to you at all. However overall the places buying leads don't have anything to offer.
      - horsawlarway 4y ago
        Yup. Too few people understand that almost all of these companies are solely loan origination and loan servicing. They are not providing the capital, they are not making money through interest. They have almost no control over the rates they offer you. They make money when a borrower signs a new loan agreement (origination) and by collecting the payments the borrower owes and passing them along to the real lender (servicing). If you're wondering why your mortgage company used to keep calling you telling you to refinance (and some still are, even with the higher rates), it's because that's another loan origination for them - another payment. They don't care that you save long term on the interest, they want the payment for closing a new loan. Same for loan consolidation (ex: consolidate your auto/credit debts!) style pitches. They're ONLY interested in originating a new loan, because that's how they get paid. ---- Basically - these guys don't have anything other than you, the borrower. They're not selling you a loan, they're selling you to real lender, which is almost always the large government backed mortgage lenders (Freddie/Fannie). This is why they jump to call you, or text you, or harass you. They are out there fishing for new borrowers to make money.
- 35mm 4y ago
  That’s how it typically works in the UK, probably because of GDPR. Might not stay that way now the EU laws are potentially getting ripped up.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    UK GDPR under threat? Do you have a link?
    - Karellen 4y ago
      https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retained+eu+law https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retained+eu+law (GDPR is UK's implementation of an EU directive, the kind of law that the Retained EU Law bill seeks to get rid of.)
      - robertlagrant 4y ago
        Thanks for the link. In this case, the Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK's implementation of GDPR. GDPR is the EU regulation. I don't see anything in there that would revoke the DPA, though. It even requires DPA-compatibility at one point, so to avoid recursion I imagine it won't be for that purpose.
        Karellen 4y ago
        I knew I remembered something else. There's also https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/358874/uk-seeks-divergence-from-gdpr-to-fuel-growth https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
  - lbriner 4y ago
    That's not how it works in the UK and not because of GDPR. Currently, organisations can claim both consent and legitimate interests as a legal basis so it is already possible to take my data from somewhere, pass it to other people and have those third-parties contact you. "Legitimate Interests" was presumably some attempt to allow things like research and things that hadn't been thought of elsewhere but this leaves a nasty loophole that is already being taken advantage of. In fact, some cookie consent banners, if you click "options", disable the consent tickbox by default but leave "legitiimate interests" ticked in some kind of dark pattern to imply that "we'd rather have your consent but we don't need it".
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  The other trivial solution is to just list all the vendors that the customer could potentially deal with and give them the ability to select the ones they'd like to receive offers from. Yes, there's less potential overall revenue there, because less leads means less revenue for lead generation companies, but it's still better than the footgun they're currently being presented with.
- xwolfi 4y ago
  I ve worked in an equivalent of lending tree. Literally no one in our company, no one, cared about loans. We were a marketing front for banks, spoke only to banks, optimized "funnels" to, well, funnel the poor souls to them, whatever the law allowed us to do. I had never met any sort of "lending expert" in that company, only SEO experts, data miners, adwords optimizers, former bank marketing managers, email copywriters, javascript programmers, etc. I work in a bank now, and we can calculate interest rate, understand consumer default profiles, calculate acceptable risk ratio for our own capital, all those stuff that have to do with loans. Point is, you cannot expect an externalized marketing department to do what you suggest. They dont care about borrowers one bit, lending is not their jobs. Banks just want to start a relationship with people and send whatever they can to whomever present an email adress, and they ll pay their marketing guys by the amount of converted leads.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  That's how a mortgage broker works. It would probably require a lot more staff to operate that way.
nerdponx 4y ago
It would be nice of course if this actually applied to the sale of the data, and not just consent to contact. But then that would hurt banks and credit rating agencies, which regulators wouldn't dare piss off, so the FCC goes for roundabout regulations like this one, which treat the symptom but not the underlying cause.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  FCC has different jurisdiction from FTC. It's in the name.
burntwater 4y ago
When I was shopping for car insurance a few months ago, I used the Burner app to give temporary phone numbers to each vendor. Allstate called before I had even completed the online application, and proceeded to call at least once a day until the number expired. Geico called once. Progressive didn't call at all. AND they were cheapest. You can guess who I went with.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Instead of going by price alone, take a look at how easy or difficult the claims process is… for any kind of insurance. You don’t want a carrier who drags its heels or refuses to pay on some technicality when you make a claim. I have a good source for this data, but am hesitant to share since i don’t want you thinking I’m biased.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    I'll remain all about price. The only thing I need car insurance for is to meet the legal requirements for car insurance. So price is the only thing that matters. But I have a bad taste in my mouth about the insurance industry in general, so color me jaded.
  - WirelessGigabit 4y ago
    I'd love to look at the data!
    - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
      This is a good starting point, but not the only one: https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insurance-companies/ https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insuranc... No affiliate links and no kick backs taken by Clark Howard.
  - burntwater 4y ago
    Thankfully I've never had to make a claim, and I hope it stays that way!
masswerk 4y ago
So they would now have to step up and act as a broker. – What, no, I just wanted to sell this lead, I'm innocent! /s
jacquesm 4y ago
Lending tree and a ton of other companies in that space are just lead gen, they couldn't care less about you as long as you fill in their form and they can then resell the data to other companies. Who in turn, if they can't make a buck on you will sell it to someone else in order to try to recoup some of their expenses. The fact that you fill in a form signals 'intent to buy' and that makes those leads worth a lot of money. The only way they can make that work is if they sell the lead as soon as possible after you've filled it out because of the competitive nature of the market. So that's exactly what they do: sell it to multiple parties at once. It's a terrible model and one of the reasons why as soon as some online calculator is broken up into multiple steps I already know where it's headed: the last form will ask for my email address to mail the offer to and my phone number for verification. I simply abandon the process at that point, and I hope their funnel analysis tells them that story a million times a day.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  > [businesses] couldn't care less about you as long as you [provide revenue] That's...not specific to leadgen.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    That cynical take is false. Many businesses care about their customers, as if you care for them they will come back again and again, while if you don't they will leave. Lead generation firms care about their customers - but their customers are not the users, it is the people buying the leads. This disconnect is why they don't care. You get the same problem at ad supported companies (news, social media...). For a long time news papers had careful public policies in places to separate the editorial side from the ad side, so they could be independent. Many advertisers hated it because the editors they were paying did things against them - but they put up with it because those editors brought in the readers of the ads. That has broken down in the modern age though.
- easygenes 4y ago
  FWIW, I found dinkytown.net for basic online financial calculators with no frills or upsells a long time ago. They sell to websites that want to use financial calculators, so they don’t care about consumers.
hgsgm 4y ago
OP: "...on subjects beyond the scope of the original consent" That drastically changes the meaning of the title. The one-at-a-time request is from an outside advocacy group Public Knowledge ( which calls itself a "free expression" group, but doesn't want free expression for advertisers... ") > I'll give you leads for customers, but you have to call them fast before my other customers do!" Why is incentivizing prompt customer service bad, or any kind of scheme? Competition drives better performance.
zitterbewegung 4y ago
If the state of email providers and software companies (google / apple) have created features around getting you off mailing lists then you know that this is a problem. I agree with the FCC and they have been very aggressive about other things like robocalling .

Johnny555 4y ago

And there’s a trivial solution for the lending tree scenario (I’m making a big leap of faith that consumers really want txt spam from a dozen different lenders) Instead of handing off customer contact info to a dozen different lenders, they can send the loan request to the lenders, and the lenders can send their offers back to lending tree who can then send it to the customer since the customer only authorized lending tree to contact them. Ideally lending tree would consolidate the responses so instead of a dozen txt messages, the customer receives a single one from lending tree.

loopdoend 4y ago
This is already a thing in the leadgen space it's called RTB. Tree has likely simply figured out that it's more profitable to sell the data multiple times. Hot leads are very valuable, especially in the pay-per-call space. Every single one of those calls the GP is complaining about likely "reached duration" and paid out to Tree. Hehe.
- nickphx 4y ago
  Sausage factory goes brrrrrrr
Kalium 4y ago
The other wrinkle is that vendors don't want the broker to control the relationship. They want to have it themselves. So a big part of why companies like Lending Tree can exist is because they sell the leads and don't have to do the work of being a CRM.
- 6510 4y ago
  They don't have to give up control, if the offer is appealing they can consent to further contact.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    control is all they have though. Big banks are behind the scene doing all the real work. All the people you talk to are doing is getting a contract signed. There are enough steps that this is valuable work that needs a lot of customer service (which is why big banks outsource it to 'independent' entities), but in the end nobody can actually give you a better rate/extra costs from the banks and credit unions already near you. The rate you care about is decided by your credit score and the current market. The closing costs are somewhat competitive, but they are in the end small. I suppose if you have really bad credit these places might find someone willing to do a risky loans (at really bad interest rates) while the local banks and credit unions won't talk to you at all. However overall the places buying leads don't have anything to offer.
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      Yup. Too few people understand that almost all of these companies are solely loan origination and loan servicing. They are not providing the capital, they are not making money through interest. They have almost no control over the rates they offer you. They make money when a borrower signs a new loan agreement (origination) and by collecting the payments the borrower owes and passing them along to the real lender (servicing). If you're wondering why your mortgage company used to keep calling you telling you to refinance (and some still are, even with the higher rates), it's because that's another loan origination for them - another payment. They don't care that you save long term on the interest, they want the payment for closing a new loan. Same for loan consolidation (ex: consolidate your auto/credit debts!) style pitches. They're ONLY interested in originating a new loan, because that's how they get paid. ---- Basically - these guys don't have anything other than you, the borrower. They're not selling you a loan, they're selling you to real lender, which is almost always the large government backed mortgage lenders (Freddie/Fannie). This is why they jump to call you, or text you, or harass you. They are out there fishing for new borrowers to make money.
35mm 4y ago
That’s how it typically works in the UK, probably because of GDPR. Might not stay that way now the EU laws are potentially getting ripped up.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  UK GDPR under threat? Do you have a link?
  - Karellen 4y ago
    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retained+eu+law https://duckduckgo.com/?q=retained+eu+law (GDPR is UK's implementation of an EU directive, the kind of law that the Retained EU Law bill seeks to get rid of.)
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      Thanks for the link. In this case, the Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK's implementation of GDPR. GDPR is the EU regulation. I don't see anything in there that would revoke the DPA, though. It even requires DPA-compatibility at one point, so to avoid recursion I imagine it won't be for that purpose.
      - Karellen 4y ago
        I knew I remembered something else. There's also https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/358874/uk-seeks-divergence-from-gdpr-to-fuel-growth https://www.itpro.co.uk/policy-legislation/data-protection/3...
- lbriner 4y ago
  That's not how it works in the UK and not because of GDPR. Currently, organisations can claim both consent and legitimate interests as a legal basis so it is already possible to take my data from somewhere, pass it to other people and have those third-parties contact you. "Legitimate Interests" was presumably some attempt to allow things like research and things that hadn't been thought of elsewhere but this leaves a nasty loophole that is already being taken advantage of. In fact, some cookie consent banners, if you click "options", disable the consent tickbox by default but leave "legitiimate interests" ticked in some kind of dark pattern to imply that "we'd rather have your consent but we don't need it".
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
The other trivial solution is to just list all the vendors that the customer could potentially deal with and give them the ability to select the ones they'd like to receive offers from. Yes, there's less potential overall revenue there, because less leads means less revenue for lead generation companies, but it's still better than the footgun they're currently being presented with.
xwolfi 4y ago
I ve worked in an equivalent of lending tree. Literally no one in our company, no one, cared about loans. We were a marketing front for banks, spoke only to banks, optimized "funnels" to, well, funnel the poor souls to them, whatever the law allowed us to do. I had never met any sort of "lending expert" in that company, only SEO experts, data miners, adwords optimizers, former bank marketing managers, email copywriters, javascript programmers, etc. I work in a bank now, and we can calculate interest rate, understand consumer default profiles, calculate acceptable risk ratio for our own capital, all those stuff that have to do with loans. Point is, you cannot expect an externalized marketing department to do what you suggest. They dont care about borrowers one bit, lending is not their jobs. Banks just want to start a relationship with people and send whatever they can to whomever present an email adress, and they ll pay their marketing guys by the amount of converted leads.
__derek__ 4y ago
That's how a mortgage broker works. It would probably require a lot more staff to operate that way.

nerdponx 4y ago

It would be nice of course if this actually applied to the sale of the data, and not just consent to contact. But then that would hurt banks and credit rating agencies, which regulators wouldn't dare piss off, so the FCC goes for roundabout regulations like this one, which treat the symptom but not the underlying cause.

hgsgm 4y ago
FCC has different jurisdiction from FTC. It's in the name.

burntwater 4y ago

When I was shopping for car insurance a few months ago, I used the Burner app to give temporary phone numbers to each vendor. Allstate called before I had even completed the online application, and proceeded to call at least once a day until the number expired. Geico called once. Progressive didn't call at all. AND they were cheapest. You can guess who I went with.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Instead of going by price alone, take a look at how easy or difficult the claims process is… for any kind of insurance. You don’t want a carrier who drags its heels or refuses to pay on some technicality when you make a claim. I have a good source for this data, but am hesitant to share since i don’t want you thinking I’m biased.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I'll remain all about price. The only thing I need car insurance for is to meet the legal requirements for car insurance. So price is the only thing that matters. But I have a bad taste in my mouth about the insurance industry in general, so color me jaded.
- WirelessGigabit 4y ago
  I'd love to look at the data!
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    This is a good starting point, but not the only one: https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insurance-companies/ https://clark.com/insurance/car-insurance/best-auto-insuranc... No affiliate links and no kick backs taken by Clark Howard.
- burntwater 4y ago
  Thankfully I've never had to make a claim, and I hope it stays that way!

masswerk 4y ago

So they would now have to step up and act as a broker. – What, no, I just wanted to sell this lead, I'm innocent! /s

jacquesm 4y ago

Lending tree and a ton of other companies in that space are just lead gen, they couldn't care less about you as long as you fill in their form and they can then resell the data to other companies. Who in turn, if they can't make a buck on you will sell it to someone else in order to try to recoup some of their expenses. The fact that you fill in a form signals 'intent to buy' and that makes those leads worth a lot of money. The only way they can make that work is if they sell the lead as soon as possible after you've filled it out because of the competitive nature of the market. So that's exactly what they do: sell it to multiple parties at once. It's a terrible model and one of the reasons why as soon as some online calculator is broken up into multiple steps I already know where it's headed: the last form will ask for my email address to mail the offer to and my phone number for verification. I simply abandon the process at that point, and I hope their funnel analysis tells them that story a million times a day.

hgsgm 4y ago
> [businesses] couldn't care less about you as long as you [provide revenue] That's...not specific to leadgen.
- bluGill 4y ago
  That cynical take is false. Many businesses care about their customers, as if you care for them they will come back again and again, while if you don't they will leave. Lead generation firms care about their customers - but their customers are not the users, it is the people buying the leads. This disconnect is why they don't care. You get the same problem at ad supported companies (news, social media...). For a long time news papers had careful public policies in places to separate the editorial side from the ad side, so they could be independent. Many advertisers hated it because the editors they were paying did things against them - but they put up with it because those editors brought in the readers of the ads. That has broken down in the modern age though.
easygenes 4y ago
FWIW, I found dinkytown.net for basic online financial calculators with no frills or upsells a long time ago. They sell to websites that want to use financial calculators, so they don’t care about consumers.

hgsgm 4y ago

OP: "...on subjects beyond the scope of the original consent" That drastically changes the meaning of the title. The one-at-a-time request is from an outside advocacy group Public Knowledge ( which calls itself a "free expression" group, but doesn't want free expression for advertisers... ") > I'll give you leads for customers, but you have to call them fast before my other customers do!" Why is incentivizing prompt customer service bad, or any kind of scheme? Competition drives better performance.

zitterbewegung 4y ago

If the state of email providers and software companies (google / apple) have created features around getting you off mailing lists then you know that this is a problem. I agree with the FCC and they have been very aggressive about other things like robocalling .