{"id":14021,"date":"2022-09-07T09:24:23","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T13:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=14021"},"modified":"2026-01-06T17:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T22:31:12","slug":"gtlsettlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2022\/09\/07\/gtlsettlement\/","title":{"rendered":"A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you\u2019re talking real money: Class-action settlement reveals Global Tel*Link\u2019s addiction to seizing customer money"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nOn August 30, a federal court in Georgia approved a settlement in the years-long class action lawsuit against Global Tel*Link Corporation (“GTL”), one of the two major providers of phone services in prisons and jails<\/a>. This litigation challenged GTL’s policy of seizing customer money from “prepaid accounts” after a short period of inactivity. Just as important, though, it shows why the FCC needs to take action to end this type of abusive practice throughout the industry.\n<\/p>\n

\nUnder the terms of the settlement<\/a>, GTL will provide cash payments to some customers, account credits to others, and will institute a uniform policy of not seizing customer funds until accounts have been inactive for a minimum of 180 days. GTL has also agreed to implement procedures to warn customers before their accounts are declared inactive. Prison Policy Initiative filed an amicus brief<\/a> in the case, pointing out certain ambiguities in the settlement agreement — our concerns were addressed by the addition of clarifying language in the court order approving the settlement.\n<\/p>\n

\nOne of the more interesting facts revealed in the case came at the very end — just days before the final hearing, the court denied GTL’s request to keep secret the amount of money it has taken from “inactive” accounts over the years.<\/span> Although the court allowed GTL to keep such amounts secret for recent periods (specifically, September 2021 onward), we now know that from April 2011 through August 2019, GTL took over $121 million<\/b> from customer accounts that it declared inactive — this averages to over $1.2 million a month. This isn’t money that GTL earned in return for providing a service, it’s simply money that GTL took because it could.\n<\/p>\n

\nWe have pointed out this shocking figure to the FCC<\/a>, along with a request to enact rules that would prohibit companies from taking funds like this. Even though GTL has agreed to some reforms as a result of the class-action settlement, other telecom companies can and do seize customer funds in a similar manner, and no company should be able to enrich itself by taking money simply because a customer hasn’t made a call in recent months.\n<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

Information about the settlement<\/h2>\n

Although the deadline to file a claim for cash payments has passed, customers with active or reactivated<\/i> accounts are still eligible to receive credits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evidence from court case shows why the FCC should act to stop abusive practices in the industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,4,1],"tags":[56,66,63],"coauthors":[39],"class_list":["post-14021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-briefings","category-phones","category-uncategorized","tag-communication","tag-phones","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14021"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18292,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14021\/revisions\/18292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14021"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}