Feature Films For Families - Controversies

Controversies

In 2009, Feature Films for Families and the Dove Foundation paid $70,000 together to the Merchandising Practices Revolving Fund. Feature Films for Families had created an alliance with the Dove Foundation, a non-profit foundation which is known for its activities of rating, reviewing, and endorsing films. FFFF worked with the Dove Foundation as part of a Nationwide campaign to promote the Dove Foundation’s non-profit organization. The two companies worked together via telemarketing, but because Feature Films for Families is a for-profit corporation, this allegiance violated Missouri's No Call law.

In 2010, Verizon Wireless filed suit against Feature Films for Families after the company allegedly placed nearly 500,000 illegal automated telemarketing calls in ten days to the mobile phones on Verizon's network. The calls were recorded advertisements for the FFFF film The Velveteen Rabbit. In May 2011, the Justice Department, acting for the FTC, filed a complaint in US District Court charging Feature Films for Families, Inc., its owner Forrest S. Baker III, and two other companies owned by Baker with "waging deceptive and illegal telemarketing campaigns pitching movies and soliciting for donations, including calls to more than 16 million phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry." The complaint seeks "a court order to permanently bar the defendants from violating the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule, as well as civil penalties, and disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains."