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FTC Moves up "Do Not Call" List Registration
tbase writes "AdAge.com has an article about the new FTC "Do-Not-Call" List which will be opening for registrations earlier than previously announced. The FTC Press Release says online registration will be available "on or around July 1." and that "Companies will face an $11,000 fine for each telemarketing call that violates the FTC's new consumer-protection provisions.""
Would be nice if it went directly to the individual(s) they phoned instead of into some politician's pocket.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
we encoutered several evolutionary steps in the last few hundred years. "age of reason", "industrial revolution", etc.
with the dawn of spam email officially being attacked and now the phone solicitors, are we stumbling upon the "age of stop bugging me" or the "age of leave me alone, I don't need more sexual stamina"??
There HAVE BEEN "Do not call" lists for many years.
The phone still rings.
There HAVE BEEN "Do not mail" lists for many years.
I get more and more junk mail.
We all know how many "Do not email" lists exists.
Regardless of action the spam keeps coming.
How about a "STAY OUT OF MY FACE AND GET A REAL JOB/LIFE" list to cover everything. Damn, my doorbell just rang, I bet somebody wants to witness with me something about their God...
Telemarketers do not follow current law. Very rarely do I get them to tell me their name or company name, let alone a manager name or address. 80% of them hang up when I ask to be placed on their DNC list.
.05% of the population wants or needs.
If they don't follow the law now, why will they follow it in the future.
And in terms of the phone companies, they see the law and fines as just another expense in a risk/reward scenario. Slamming has been illegal for many year, but they still do it because the fines do not match the profit they get from it.
This sounds like a great opportunity, but put me down as a skeptic. If the courts don't swat it down, then it will be simply ignored. The governments (local/state/federal) won't/can't enforce existing law.
I get up to 10 calls a day. I'm sick of it. My phone and my e-mail has been confiscated by marketers of crap that less then
Also, beware of the following: After this law takes effect, people will be out to get you to put your phone number on all sorts of things (product registration, checks, etc.) because the fine print will say that by giving your phone number, you waive your DNC status with them and their partners. Guard your phone number and e-mail address like you (should) guard your SSN.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
In business and politics, money talks. When you fine a corporation, you have to get them to notice. If the fine were small, the law would be ignored.
I believe a large part of this money is supposed to go back into keeping the DNC database running.
And yes, I work for a business in the industry (well, teleresearch, but still annoying)
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
I think they'd be opening a nasty can of worms if the general public had a financial motive to get telemarketers to call them. Scenario: you and a friend get jobs as telemarketers, then purposely call each others houses 50 times a day just to rack up profits from the fines.
Considering we want this system to actually work (creates potential for a similar anti-spam system in the future), it's probably best to keep the system well-designed.
That way the government is more likely to enforce the law. If it was up to an individual to enforce it, they would have to spend most of the 11,000$ as attorny fees bringing the telemarketer to court. Not to mention the waste of time and effort. The government on the other hand will go in an all out frenzy after these people, especially after Bush's tax cut, and the government has a lot more power behind it than the average Joe.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I wouldn't feel safe not answering all of the "Out of Area" and "Unknown" calls... who knows maybe it's your wife from a pay phone after her car broke down. Shaite happens.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
I don't understand why we need a law about this. If somebody calls you and you don't want to talk to them, just *hang up*. Easy. Simple. No legislation. No arguments over who got the 11k for the offense. No tax payer dollars wasted. And really, you aren't offending the sales drone on the other end of the line. I screen my calls with an answering machine. This technology has been around for, I would guess, decades, and cost me about $50. I have a very short message on it, and everyone who we want to talk to knows that they need to leave a message. I incur ZERO annoyance from telemarketers, unless you count the amusement at having them try to have a conversation with my answering machine.
Why not just send GBII an anonymous letter saying that all Spammers are really agents of Al Qaeda and wait for the war?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
The main problem with caller ID is that it often works like this:
1. Phone company charges you for a great new service allowing you to see who's calling, thus eliminating the need to speak with telemarketers.
2. Phone company charges telemarketers for the ability to mask their number from the caller ID units.
3. Phone company charges you for a new ANTI-anti-missle....
and so on.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Why do telemarketing groups fight something which keeps them from wasting time calling folks who identify themselves as "not interested"?
Probably because there are people out there who can't say "no". Some people can be talked into spending money on pretty much anything. These are the people the telemarketers really want to go after. If a person knows they have this tendency, they would be sure to put themselves on the do-not-call list.
The people who don't end up on the list probably don't know about it, are suspicious about it, or some other reason... not because they WANT to hear from telemarketers. It's not like watching commercials--telemarketing has no redeeming value for the recipient.
Except that:
- it's my phone and I'm paying for the service. With that in mind it's perfectly reasonable to assume that I get to decide who gets to call. If I tell someone to fuck off, then they better damn well fuck off.
- it's my email and my internet access. I get to decide to can send me mail using the services *I* pay for. In a capitalist society this is a perfectly reasonable expectation. Only a communist motherfucker would insist that I give everyone equal time on *my* dime.
- it's my mailbox and it's my postal service. The postal service does not belong to spammers, nor do I have any recognizable alternative to said post office. One would think, given no alternatives other than the government agency that I supposedly control as a citizen of the United States, I could dictate an end to spam. Funny, I can't.
And, by the way, you are *required* to have a receptacle on your property for mail delivery. This is a *law*. Funny thing, that.
- most of all, it's *my* time. Neither you nor anyone else has any business wasting it unless you're willing to pay whatever fee I set. This too is good capitalism; in fact, excellent capitalism.
Unfortunately for all of us, capitalism has very little to do with 21st century America. It had little to do with America prior to the 21st century, but even less so now. If we lived in a truly capitalist society I'd actually have the rights I listed above, as a logical extension of the free market. If anything, I'd have even more rights, provided by the tooth-and-nail competition of competing services all tripping over themselves to steal away customers, with the elimination of harrassment by low-life scumbags as a selling point for those services.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You can't go down to McDonalds and start harassing the cashiers there, so why should telemarketers be any different.
How is it different? Because I have to GO to Mc Donalds, somewhere that I don't hold sacred as my own, and something I would do as my own choice. These people call MY house, they aren't doing it because they are "making a living", they're doing it because they're no talent ass clowns who have nothing more to offer society than sitting on their ass trying to peddle shit wares.
They want to invade my home then they will feel my wrath, they are an unwanted intruder into my comfort zone and I will treat them accordingly. Since I also take pleasure in tormenting their little souls to the point that they want to reach out and cry, I want them to call. It's a double edge sword, I don't want to be bothered by them, but if I'm bored I will certainly take the time to just mess with their heads every chance I get.
Obviously you are or know someone who is a telemarketer. Let me get you in on a little secret, once you work telemarketing you are no longer human, you are the scum of the earth and deserve nothing more than a strong kick upside the head and to be placed in the middle of a desert to slowly rot in the sun of dehydration and heat exhuation. Deserving for worthless pond scum as those who work telemarketing.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I get phone calls daily from people trying to get me to sign up for trade journals and people trying to get me to sign up for their credit cards. It's a big time waster. Questions is, would this do-not-call list work for a business? Or would that somehow mean that other legitimate but unsolicited calls would not be allowed? For instance, a semiconductor company rep that is just calling to check up on things.