Slashdot Mirror
U.S. National Do-Not-Call Registry On the Way?
WinkyN writes "Yay! The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a measure that creates a national "do not call" list for telemarketers. Telemarketers are required to check the list every three months and can be fined up to $11,000 each time they violate the law. Now I won't have to ignore my telephone when it rings since more than 50 percent of my calls are from telemarketers." Congress is just getting around to passing a budget bill to run the government for fiscal year 2003 (started last October), and we're now in the time period when everything and the kitchen sink gets thrown into it just before it passes. Good to know that there's at least one useful piece of legislation.
Now all we need is a do not send email...
Here in Indiana, the Do Not Call List has been a major success. I'm tempted to say it's the single most effective piece of legislation I've seen come along in quite a while. The problem with this being done at the federal level is the amount of lobbying that will take place for special exemptions (political campaigns, charities, etc.). Hopefully these will be kept to an absolute minimum, but in Washington, I wouldn't count on it!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
and can be fined up to $11,000 each time they violate the law.
now, this law would be really impressive if we, the 'victims', get a cut of that 11 grand...
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
All I can say is its about time something like this is passed. I'm sick of getting tons of phone calls for crap i don't want. Now if they could only stop the mass of credit card applications my wife and i get every day...
Charities, surveys and calls on behalf of politicians would be exempt.
The FTC has limited authority to police telemarketing calls from certain industries, including airlines, banks and telephone companies.
I wonder if "limited authority" means this bill won't apply to calls from those industries.
I keep being mailed out offers for christmas puddings, expensive cakes from New York, Readers' Digest's "free radio", and Visa Gold Card application forms (I am a teenager who does not work, it is weird, who gave them my name?). I am tired of it. How about an opt out for the letterbox as well as the phone?
I'm on the state list in NY. So are my parents. We both get a new kind of call. A lovely British-accented woman's voice, or jerky man's voice computer message is left, daily. "This is NOT a sales call. We have an urget matter to speak to you about..." blah blah, "Please call us at 1-800-...." 'SO THAT WE CAN MAKE A FREAKING SALES PITCH' is the part they don't add.
A federal level law has not even been passed yet and already the tele-crapers have a way around it. This method was started, I believe, by collection agencies but has been picked up by the marketeers. (I am yelling at one of them as I type this!)
I've responded to EVERY telemarketer for the past 2 years with "add me to your do not call list". I've added myself to the MN statewide do not call list. I STILL get 4-5 telemarketing calls a week. They've just changed their tactics a bit to get through the loopholes in the MN law. Now, if they don't actually intend to complete the sale on the phone, they can get away with it. So, instead of being asked to sign up with a mortgage or buy siding on the phone, they just want me to set up an appointment with a friendly sales representative to discuss the matter in person.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Methinks not... funding for it passed the house 418-7 yesterday. Quoteth a congresscritter by CNN:
"If anyone holds this legislation up, we're prepared to give out their home phone number," the Louisiana Republican said.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist supports the bill and is confident it will pass.
More than 1 million people have signed up for our "do-not-call" list, which went into effect Jan. 1. Residents are already noticing a difference. Interestingly enough, MCI is suspected of violating the rules and calling people anyway, according to our state officials. The AG's office is investigating, but for these lists to truly be effective, someone is going to have to make an example out of a few companies trying to slip through.
If the government knows they'll get 11,000$ for every illegal telemarketing call, you know they are going to spend every possible effort to collect it. They could hire people who's job is to hunt down these illegal phone calls. Just 4 calls in the entire nation each year would pull in 44,000$, enough to pay someone fulltime to track these calls.
Just think of how much effort the government goes to get a few extra hundered dollars off your tax form, so what do you think they will do to get an extra 11,000$ for a bad phonecall?
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
So, what's the U.S. Government going to do when all your telemarketing calls start coming in from China?
You know, like all the spam.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
It's a little scary entering your SSN into a computerized database, but I figured these guys already have a lot more on me, so I went ahead and did it. Hope it works.
ScienceSeeker.org
> Now I won't have to ignore my telephone when it rings
Don't start picking up your phone quite yet. The article says "Charities, surveys and calls on behalf of politicians would be exempt".
Think about it... If they outlawed all radio advertising except your business wouldn't you do more radio advertising? I mean, all of the "clutter" would be gone, and your message would be more effective. In this case, people will be generally less ticked off about unsolicited calls so they will be more likely to talk to a caller.
And the word "surveys" is a loophole so big you could drive a truck through it.
"Hello sir, we are doing a survey to find out how many people would shop at K-Mart if CDs were on sale for $12.99."
Is this a regional thing or something? I'm stunned that someone would claim 50% of their calls are from telemarketers. On average, I would estimate that I get 2 or 3 telemarketing calls per year . Is it normal for people to receive that many telemarketing calls?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Anyone else find it ironic that Senator Hollings was the backer on this bill?? It has me wondering what the catch is.. Surely there has to be some evil wording in it somewhere if he is involved.
-- Cameron
In texas, to successfully protect your privacy, you need to register with the texas do-not-call (dnc) list costing about five dollars per year. Next, on the national level, you need to opt-out (for life) from all credit-card offers, mass solicitations, etc, by registering with the four credit bureaus. There is a 1-800 number for this somewhere. Next, you need to send a similar form letter to the National Advertisers Organization opting out as well (more information can be found through research).
It's so good to see this coming through. But it's also about technology and where we draw the line on privacy. The Euros, for all their failings, got this right, they're system is starts with the customer in opt-out mode, whereas we are all opt-in, thus the thousand letters from Visa.
The marketers, from the article, and other things I've read, talk about cost. This is, well bullshit. Yes, it will cost them more, on a relative basis, because their samples are based on a two-percent acceptance rate BY SENDING EVERY US CITIZEN A FLYER! But what if you could identify those people who really did want information, then there is no wasted paper, or time, or energy. That's less money! I'm sure someone, somewhere needs a free carpet-cleaning estimate and ten dollars off their next pizza, but it ain't me.
Will it cost jobs? Yes, telemarketer jobs. But the reason those jobs are so prevalent is because you have to call EVERY CITIZEN IN THE UNITED STATES. Yes, those jobs will right-size, but you are assured that those person are talking to people who are interested. Does it all make sense now? I hate when people make stupid arguments that defy common sense and macroeconomics.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
my home phone rings several times a day. I use my cell phone exclusivly and have never given out my home phone number. I only have a home phone for my Tivo and for quick outgoing calls if my cell is dead. Every call that comes through is a telemarketer and it's not like my number is a hot ticket as I have completely stop answering it.
100% of my 3-5 phone calls a day are telemarketers.
regional or not, that is unreasonable.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The somewhat relevant part of the first is that the right to free speech will not be infringed. It's actually not too relevant, because it's a well-established doctrine that (a) commercial speech may be regulated, and (b) the right to speak does not include a right to force others to listen.
The ninth basically states, if memory serves, that the Constitution's enumeration of certain specific rights does not mean that that's ALL the rights under it.
The tenth is perhaps the strongest (in a legal sense) way for opponents of the list to fight it -- powers not granted elsewhere in the Constitution, either explicitly or implicitly, are reserved to the states.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
So long as the telemarketing company itself, or the company it's marketing for, is engaged in interstate commerce, the feds have a legitimate Constitutional power to pretty well smack 'em around.
If it's "Bob's Handyman Service" that only does local business, than the interstate commerce clause doesn't apply; unfortunately the courts seem to have problems with literacy, and like to pretend that all commerce counts as interstate.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I just called verizon and canceled my land line. All I have now is my cell. And I never get telemarketing calls on my cell becouse they know if they call my cell I can sue becouse they are using MY minutes.
Another thing I want to know, say you sign up, and some mom-and-pop shop that bought a telemartketing recording software calls you. What do you do? cWhat will happen? I would like to know what an individual has to do. Do you hire a layer? or does the agency do the paperwork?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Sounds familiar. I'm a Pac Bell customer in Southern CA. Two years ago a similar plague of automated calls started filling my answering machine memory with messages that were nothing but sequences of beeps, each lasting more than 3 minutes. Every day, a dozen or more times a day, these calls arrived exactly every seven minutes apart, with caller ID giving an "UNAVAILABLE" origin. It rendered my answering machine useless, and I was in the middle of an employment search!
I finally got fed up and called my local PD, who set up a trap and trace with Pac Bell. Although it successfully identified the caller, the PD wouldn't identify them for me - something about potential for retaliation. The detective promised me that he sent the caller a warning, but since they were out of state there was little I could do. The calls continued. Month after month.
Every month I set up another trap and trace, and eventually told the PD that I wanted recourse to civil court, and that I required the ID of the offensive caller in order to file suit. At this point the PD got the FBI involved, and finally, after more than a year, I got a call from a detective and found out the story:
The calls were originating from Dallas. The caller was a SBC Long Distance telemarketer using an autodialer. That's right, SBC.
My own phone company was jamming my answering machine with dozens of nuisance calls a day!
Why it just beeped, no one could explain. My theory is that it was my 1970's era Radio Shack answering machine with a continuous loop outgoing message cassette. The beep is a metal splice strip. The beep tone must have triggered something in the autodialer. Anyway, the FBI got results. The calls stopped. They briefly resumed again, but this time there was an 800 number on my caller ID. I called it and it was SBC LD customer service. They denied calling me at all, but I spoke to a supervisor and made it clear that I did not want them calling me at all and if they did, they would be subject to fine and criminal prosecution for harassment, due to the frequency and duration of their PITA calls.
I finally got peace.
To this day I am still confounded by the irony - it was SBC, my own phone company. And I can't sit thru a SBC long distance ad on television without shuddering in revulsion.
I can see the fnords!
This may already be posted above, but since I don't have time to read through I'll go ahead and post it anyhow:
I've heard for some time while they've been drumming up support for this bill that there's one big downside to it. As the article says, the bill permits non-profit calls, but what it doesn't say is that this bill will preempt any state laws that are more restrictive. So, for example, people in Indiana (which already has a very good do-not-call-list law) will get MORE calls under this bill since there is a wader range of calls permitted even when you are on the list.
What if my time is worth money? Shouldn't I at least have control over that. If I have control over neither than what do I get control over? Attaching a link to a libertarian site to your comments is an abomination.
As for your so called "100 examples of time-wasting more significant than spam [and telemarketing]." I call bullshit. I dare you to name 10 time wasters that affect you as you sit in your house minding your own business.
You sir are a Troll.
Is those creepy freaks that leave you a voicemail message trying to make it sound as if they are someone you're supposed to know. I get ~4 telemarketing calls a day, and some of the newer ones leave a message along the lines of "Hey guys how are you doing? We really need to get togther and have dinner or something soon! The reason I'm calling is because we just signed up for this amazing timeshare and wanted to let you in on it!" etc etc....
The first time I got one of these I admit I was a bit confused trying to figure out which of our friends was leaving this message - until they got to the timeshare part of course. Damn vermin telemarketers....
On another point, I don't understand how there are escape clauses for politicos and charities. Perhaps this should be up to the consumer as to whether or not they want to receive these calls? Maybe there can be an option when you sign up for the DNC list to block these calls too? I would certainly at least want to block the politicians.
Oh well, maybe that'll be in V2.0
\/\/oobie
Disclaimer: I am a telemarketer.
Everyone is quick to jump on the bandwagon that yay, a national DNC list is great, great the politicians are doing something good, blah blah blah.
If you pay attention to this type of legislation, you'll notice that there is one major hole...political calls are almost always exempt from telemarketing laws. For example, in commercial work, we can call between 8am-9pm, and generally make only 2 requests (unless it is a no 2nd request state), and observer DNC lists / requests.
However, our political division can legally call any time of day, and they can pitch you continuously, and in most cases, call you even if you are on your states DNC list. Granted, our company has higher standards than that, but the lack of regulation is there.
This past election, our company raised millions of dollars to help get republicans re-elected. In fact, i remember being told we were the second largest source of donations for the particular division (senate, house, or president, our division will remain nameless) we were calling for. They realize what a vital avenue telemarketing is, and always make sure they are exempt from the laws they pass.
It just goes to show that the politicians are looking out for themselves first before they are looking out for you.