Disconnecting Telemarketers

Anonymous Scientist at UMass sent in a story about opt-out telemarketing laws, and several people submitted this story about a spam bill in the Senate. New York's telemarketing law does work - since we put our number on the list, we've gotten a couple of calls from charities (not covered by the law) and a couple of calls from Time-Warner Cable, asking us to sign up for cable. Time-Warner's calls would be banned, except that we have a pre-existing business relationship with them - you see, we already have cable. Update: 05/18 15:30 GMT by M : Oh, and if you live in New York: NYNoCall.com.

Comments

German telemarketing laws work

[benb]

In Germany, telemarketing is forbidden. A company may only call you, if you have an existing business relationship with them. (And you can terminate that relationsship and demand that they delete data about you.) I.e. opt-in, not opt-out. That's IMO the only sane way.

It works - I don't remember *ever* being called by telemarketers. And that although I am listed in the phone book.

BTW: In Germany, all my data belongs to me, too.
BTW2: It does not work for faxes. I made the error to enlist my number in the fax phone book and get spammed by fax about once or twice a week.

Some of what I said might be wrong.

"Why can't we all just get along?"

[Observer]

FWIW, here in Switzerland you can ask for your phone directory entry (dead tree and online versions) to be flagged with an asterisk, which means "no advertising, thanks". Do this, and the lists that the directory company sells for telemarketing don't contain your number, and - mostly - if someone calls you despite this they're sensible enough to back off immediately when you point out that your number is flagged in this way. There is no charge for this flagging, btw.

"No advertising" stickers on your physical mailbox are - mostly - also respected here.

I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe that both of these mechanisms are merely advisory with no legal sanctions behind them. Companies operating in Switzerland seem to have worked out that if people signal that they don't want junk mail and junk faxes and junk phone calls then it's a bad idea to irritate them by ignoring these signals. Of course, in Switzerland the citizenry gets to vote directly on issues at all levels of government from local community up to national, and if telemarketeers and their like really pissed off the general public they might find that the federal government would be instructed by voters to Do Something About It.

--Worked In Telemarketing--

[ImaLamer]

You must understand that phone numbers on some systems are just sequentially dialed - yes, we used war dialing.

But the first rule to cold call dialing is to NEVER (yes, bold and italics are necessary) use the information provided by whomever the list is bought from - even the phone company.

While I know that your problem was with a company which didn't take care of their lists (lead-lists should be taken care of very carefully), the phone company could also help by letting the company know who has changed their numbers or moved.

Lead lists are a whole 'nother thing. If you have a list of leads or subscribers, etc, then you absolutely need to take care of those lists.

If you don't, there is your sales force.