City Robocalling Bandit Sign Business Owners

The Streets commissioner says the city has been calling bandit sign business owners every 15 minutes with an autodialer. It's worked, sometimes.

Lose 30 pounds in 30 days! We buy any home! Get cash for your car! Bandit signs are the real-life equivalent of email spam, and they’re illegal — you can’t advertise on a phone pole. But they go up (and stay up) anyway, because it’s not expensive to staple a bunch of signs all over the city and the the city doesn’t really take the signs down or strictly enforce fines for illegal advertising.

But the Streets Department has been using a new idea to combat illegal signs: Robo-dialing! KYW 1060’s Mike Dunn reports Streets Commissioner David Perri told City Council the department has been autodialing businesses with illegal signs every 15 minutes until they come down. He says it works about half the time.

Could we be entering a brave new world where all Philadelphia lawbreakers are harassed at 15-minute intervals by autodialers? Will the sign owners get around this by simply printing website addresses on their signs? Only time will tell.

[KYW 1060]