SECOND CHANCE?: NexLevel Direct Responds to Schick Ruling with Promise of Better Compliance Moving Forward

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So there’s a lot of really good stuff about TCPAWorld.com becoming one of the most powerful and best-read legal blogs in the nation.

I can share lots of important information with lots of people extremely quickly, and engage with an entire telecom community. I can help defense lawyers get better. I can remind Plaintiff’s lawyers to stay ethical. Plus I can impact policy decisions, help clean up legislative errors and put an end to unfair practices with a mere whisper on my blog.

Its pretty cool to be the Czar.

But there’s a downside too. The blog has become so powerful that when a company gets negative press on TCPAWorld.com it might really damage them. So I always try to be really cautious and stick carefully to the wording of legal decisions, and never just throw mud on a company needlessly.

Nonetheless, sometimes a decision will be titled in a way that a company really doesn’t look great when I cover a story.

For instance on Monday I covered the ruling in Schick v. Caliber Home Loans, Case No. 20-cv-00617-VC, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 176765 (N.D. Cal.  September 14, 2021) where a mortgage lender was able to escape liability for calls made by a subvendor. 

While the ruling was great substantively for both defendants, the Court’s ruling put much of the blame for the calls on NexLevel and suggested that the company was less than forthright in its dealings with Caliber.

This didn’t sit well with the CEO of NexLevel Direct who reached out to me and wanted to emphasize that his company is not a bad actor. He acknowledged mistakes were made in the past but that they’ve really cleaned up their act and are dedicated to doing things the right way and being a responsible member of the lead gen community.

I thought it was a pretty nice message–especially the part where he acknowledged his company had screwed up a bit in the past but wanted to use that as a jumping off point to assure better compliance moving forward.

Now, I don’t know these guys–and I’m certainly not promoting or endorsing them– but since NexLevel was hammered pretty bad in my post Monday I figured I’d give them a chance to explain themselves. Here’s what they had to say:

NexLevel Direct was founded in 2017 and is now one of the nation’s premier customer acquisition marketing agencies focused on the insurance and financial industries. Our team is trusted to deliver millions of the most qualified, high-intent customers to many of the world’s largest brands

“We were fairly new to the lead gen world back when this happened” says NexLevel Direct CEO Bill Borneman in reference to the Caliber suit “and we used it as a catalyst to build a safer more compliant system. We retained a top-level compliance consultant to come in and fully audit our system and make recommendations on how to best protect our clients. [We] built a very dynamic internal system for filtering leads such as incorporating the Blacklist Alliance API and Ringa platforms to further deter leads getting thru our system that are not fully opted in, and confirming legitimate Jornaya and Trusted Form certificates. We also narrowed our use of affiliates and require a more stringent onboarding process to avoid any bad actors. We take this very very seriously and have taken all the necessary steps (and more) to make sure all our leads are properly opted in and fully compliant as per the rules and laws to protect our clients.”

Like I said, I’m not endorsing these folks. But this seems pretty sincere. I hope they stay true to their word and enjoy good–compliant–success in the future.

Do things the right way, and stay redemptive TCPAWorld.

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Published by Eric J. Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.

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