The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report yesterday that says that while the FCC processes about 95% of the complaints that come in, it takes some sort of enforcement action in only about 9% of them. “The GAO said it was unable to determine why the [other] investigations were closed without action because ‘FCC does not systematically collect these data.'” The FCC uses five separate databases and “about 46,000 paper files” to track complaints, and the GAO said “made it difficult to get answers to basic questions like how long it takes the agency to close an investigation and the total dollar amount it assesses in fines.”

Other interesting findings from the study:

• Complaints rose by 40% from 2003 to 2006
• “Telemarketers generated the most, 178,079 out of 454,373 complaints.
• Billing rates for both wireline and wireless telephone providers were second, accounting for 117,875 complaints.

“Report Faults FCC on Complaint Tracking” [Associated Press]
(Photo: Getty)

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