As a small piece of good news for consumers, privacy laws are getting more and more strict, and while they are not perfect, they are most certainly improving our day-to-day lives, especially when they target annoyances like robocalls. These are pre-recorded messages that are generated using automatic dialing systems and are commonly used by telemarketers and they are a complete nuisance.
While we might associate them with telemarketers, they are used for many things like political campaigns, emergency updates, and even customer notifications like appointment reminders or booking confirmations. While some of these uses are legitimate and useful, they do not make the calls any less grating, especially when differentiating between the useful and the useless calls is so difficult. Because of this, laws have been put in place to help control how these calls are made.
Robocalls in the US, a regulated nuisance that has led to a lawsuit
In the U.S., the main law governing robocalls is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which was passed back in 1991. In order for a robocall to be legitimate, it needs to include who is calling and contact details like the caller’s phone number and address. Without that the call violates the law and the company responsible can be severely penalized. One weird exception for the public, but not when considering who made the law, is that political organizations are allowed to bypass the National Do Not Call Registry which no other company is allowed to do, although they still need to get your explicit permission to call you, and there is no bypassing that part.
While most companies play by the rules and just annoy their potential customers enough, recently one of the biggest names in the healthcare industry, Optum, which operates under the UnitedHealth Group umbrella, stepped outside the line and is now facing a class action lawsuit. They have been accused of using robocalls to contact people without their consent, and while the case never went to trial, they have settled it for $1.8 million to avoid further investigating.
The details of the case are fairly straightforward, Optum created a new initiative “Optum at Home”, which was meant as a program to provide care for people who have chronic or complicated health conditions, often in the comfort of their homes. While the idea was fine, and even great for those in need, the way the company tried to promote it was not. They used automated messages to contact individuals who were not even members of UnitedHealthcare, had not signed any consent forms and who had even actively opted out of any contact from the company.
And this was not just a small glitch in the system for a couple of months, the robocalls went out over a span of more than five years, between December 11, 2019, and March 27, 2025. Since they were not done after getting permission from recipients, these calls were in direct violation of the TCPA and those affected were not pleased.
The lawsuit detailed that “The promotional messages were invasive. They violated the plaintiff’s privacy as well as the TCPA protections.” Many of the affected consumers did not receive just one call, they got multiple calls and messages, even though they did not have any relationship with UnitedHealthcare and had not opted in to receive any communication from them.
The case was handled in the Eastern District of North Carolina and the resulting settlement is a reminder for all companies that violating consumer rights will not go unpunished by the law. Companies, no matter how big they are or how useful their product is, cannot just choose to ignore telemarketing laws without facing consequences.