CaptionCall to Pay $40.5M for TRS Violations

Sorenson Communications and its CaptionCall agreed to reimburse the Telecom Relay Service Fund $28 million and pay a $12.5 million fine for violating TRS rules on incentives and reimbursement filings, in a consent decree with the FCC Enforcement Bureau. It’s the “largest recovery of monies for the TRS Fund and the largest fine for violations of the TRS rules,” the bureau said Friday.

An investigation beginning in 2017 found that CaptionCall, which received conditional certification to provide IP captioned telephone service in 2014, violated the prohibition on offering or providing hearing-health professionals incentives tied to a consumer’s decision to register for or use IP CTS. The bureau said CaptionCall “implemented programs that involved a significant number of hearing health professionals and a wide range of CaptionCall representatives.”

The company was found to have provided “free meals, gift baskets, gift cards, and monetary contest awards” to individuals who referred patients to them. This was “explicitly offered to reward past referrals or encourage future referrals,” the bureau said. Evidence suggested the provider paid a third-party marketer for referrals and the money was shared with health professionals through revenue sharing. CaptionCall disputed that its employees were aware of this.

Part of the reimbursement stemmed from the accuracy of reimbursement filings. IP CTS providers are required to obtain self-certification from their users attesting to their eligibility before they can submit claims to the TRS Fund for minutes handled. The provider “voluntarily disclosed” self-certification issues to the bureau in November 2019, saying it found a “loophole” in its registration process and couldn’t verify a subset of users. CaptionCall notified the bureau in December 2020 that it didn't collect certain identity validation documentation from some users. IP CTS providers must get documentation if a user doesn’t have a Social Security number, and CaptionCall acknowledged it failed to accordingly notify employees. The FCC declined to comment Monday.

The agreement was to “settle a past inquiry related to incentives of small value as well as our customer onboarding processes” and “agreed upon through negotiation with the FCC,” emailed a Sorenson spokesperson Monday: “We are glad to have this matter behind us, and we continue to focus on enabling communication for hard-of-hearing Americans.” The agreement has no impact on the provider’s conditional certification to provide IP CTS, she said.

CaptionCall agreed to a compliance plan. It “enhanced internal controls to ensure compliance with company policies, and we now exceed best practices in the industry,” the spokesperson said. CaptionCall will be required to “prominently display” a headline on its website that links to a document explaining the prohibition on incentives and rewards, and that IP CTS users must submit self-certifications. It will track its direct costs of providing IP CTS separately from ancillary costs, such as marketing.