AWMA was invited to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection on legislation, HR 3993, entitled the “Calling Card Protection Act.”  The Subcommittee will hold a hearing on this issue on December 3rd and AWMA President, Scott Ramminger, will provide testimony before the Subcommittee on behalf of the distributor community.

At issue is the fairness of this new bill – HR 3993 – which was recently introduced by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY).  HR 3993 is aimed at protecting consumers from unfair and deceptive practices with respect to the pre-paid calling cards.  It is true that some unscrupulous manufacturers of these products are misrepresenting the number of minutes contained in these cards and should be punished.  However, as currently drafted, this measure would hold distributors of fraudulent pre-paid calling cards liable for simply acting as a conduit between the manufacturers of these fraudulent products and the convenience stores even if distributors were completely unaware of the discrepancy contained in the cards.

AWMA’s Scott Ramminger will testify on Thursday, December 3rd that law-abiding distributors should not be made to shoulder this unfair burden of liability when they are simply acting as unwitting go-betweens for these products.  Ramminger will offer a legislative “fix” to the legislation before the Subcommittee that will offer distributors much-needed protection from this unfair liability.  The AWMA language would essentially exempt a distributor from liability if the distributor of fraudulent pre-paid calling cards was “unable to know or control” the deceptive nature of said cards.

AWMA will report to members on the Subcommittee hearing and on any new developments with respect to this issue.