Getting robocalls? You can turn them into cash with a little work

Robocalls never seem to end.

Just ask Cristina.

“At some point, I was getting probably 10 calls a day? Maybe more?”

While on vacation with family on Sanibel, the single mom of two learned about a kit claiming to turn those calls into cash.

“My dad looked at me and said ‘That’s not going to work, that’s a scam. You can’t get money off of those calls.’ ”

Still, Cristina bought the $47 robocall kit. Not long after, she got her first check for $750, calling it hardly any work.

“I always think Christmas was funded on a student loan scammers dime,” she laughed.

A year and a half later, Cristina is up to $6,000 with more money waiting in the wing.

Barbara Bernard, 24, of West Palm Beach bought the Robocalls.cash kit too and said the money she earned helped her pay off her car.

“The fact that I was able to pay it off in as little as under a year was just amazing. I never thought I could do that on my own,” Bernard said.

She calls it one of the best investments she’s made.

“Since purchasing it in March, I believe I’ve made at least $6,000,” Bernard said.

How it works

The $47 kit is a downloadable PDF.

It includes what law the robocaller is breaking, what you need to say, and fill in a blank demand letter.

That means when your cell phone rings pick it up, act interested, and carefully find out who’s calling and from where.

Doc Compton created the kit and said getting the correct information takes patience and skill.

“They’re reluctant to give you any identifying information because they know what they’re doing is illegal,” Compton said.

Once you track down the identifying information you need, plug it into the demand letter template, and send it off to the company.

While consumers can take companies to court, they often settle.

“They make millions and millions of dollars. If they have to pay out a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and settle, it’s a cost of doing business. You think of it as advertising,” Compton said.

There’s also a members-only Facebook support group where customers can ask other kit users questions.

Why it works

The law robocallers are breaking is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a law passed to stop spam faxes in the early 1990s.

“These days we’re using it to help people prevent the robocalls to their cell phones with automated dialers without their expressed prior written consent because that’s what the TCPA mandates,” Compton said.

If an organization is tax-exempt and a non-profit, they are exempt from the TCPA.

The TCPA applies to calls and texts sent to a cell phone. Landlines are not actionable.

However, if a person requests the organization to cease contact and it continues, the texts and calls to mobiles become actionable.