FTC Bans Prerecorded Telemarketing Drivel

coondoggie writes "In the ongoing battle to let us eat dinner in peace without being interrupted by amazingly annoying telemarketer blather, and in this case the even more infuriating recorded telemarketing drivel, the Federal Trade Commission today basically outlawed recorded telemarketing calls. Specifically, the FTC changed its venerable Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) to prohibit, as of Sept. 2009, telemarketing calls that deliver prerecorded messages, unless a consumer has agreed to accept such calls from a given caller/seller. Between now and 2009, telemarketers must provide an obvious, easy and quick way for consumers to opt-out of any call, the FTC said. Such an opt-out mechanism needs to be in place by December 1, 2008."

Comments

Re:From my own experience.

[KGIII]

I'll call you on this...

Any abuse a telemarketer gets is deserved in spades.

Let me fix that for you...

Any abuse a human gets is deserved in spades.

To which I say, WTF? I was a SysOp at ICT (telemarket firm basically though a lot of it was inbound calls) and these are single mothers, kids, and handicapped people. They are mothers, daughters, and sons.

There are reasonable ways to be removed from their calling list, none of which require abuse. NO CALLING LIST CAN BE MAINTAINED IF YOU REQUEST TO BE REMOVED FROM IT. (However, each political party's representative firms or the likes can call you until you ask to be removed.) There are methods and ABUSING people is not acceptable, ever.

Additionally, the GP didn't sound as if they were asking for sympathy - they were asking for civility.

You, sir, disgust me. There is no excuse to abuse people, ever.