Beginning on about November 3, 2006, Illinois residents began receiving unsolicited text messages alerting them that, "We have someone interested in buying or renting your Time Share" and directing the recipient to logon to www.webuyresorts.com or www.resortsellers.com for more information. The Web sites vanished from the Internet a few days after consumers began complaining about the unsolicited messages.
Madigan's Consumer Protection Division has received 66 written complaints and 190 complaints by phone from consumers complaining that they received these unsolicited text messages from the defendants.
Blanketing cell phone customers with unsolicited text messages costs consumers. Depending on a consumer's cell phone plan, the consumer either is charged a fee for each message received or her monthly bucket of text messages, for which she pays a monthly fee, is reduced. In addition, receiving and viewing text messages uses precious battery power which could leave consumers unable to make necessary calls, including emergency calls.
"The defendants have attempted to illegally shift their advertising costs to consumers by making the consumers pay to receive ads. This conduct is particularly egregious because consumers have no way to avoid these costs that they never agreed to incur and, in this case, many of the consumers who complained to my office said they do not even own a time share to sell," Madigan said.
