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FTC Amends Telemarketing Rule To Ban Payment Methods Used By Scammers
An anonymous reader writes: The Federal Trade Commission has approved final amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), including a change that will help protect consumers from fraud by prohibiting four discrete types of payment methods favored by scammers. The TSR changes will stop telemarketers from dipping directly into consumer bank accounts by using certain kinds of checks and "payment orders" that have been "remotely created" by the telemarketer or seller. In addition, the amendments will bar telemarketers from receiving payments through traditional "cash-to-cash" money transfers – provided by companies like MoneyGram, Western Union, and RIA.
What changes is very little. If a telemarketer is honest he'll probably be playing by the rules already - however these people are scammers. They're not going to suddenly start changing the way they operate because the FTC said "stop, or we'll say stop again!". It's not like most of the marks these people are going after will even be aware of such changes.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Use two bank accounts, one big, one small, say a few thousand $/Euro. No merchant gets the big account number, only recurring work, retirement transfers into the big account and deposits. 1-2 monthly transfers from big acct to small acct to keep it full.
Why not ban telemarketers altogether?
The thing with this "direct bank access" in Germany is that I can go to my bank inside six weeks after the transfer and just tell them "reverse that transaction" and they just do it no question asked. So no scammer would ever use that to get money.
In fact, the "scamming" happens more the other way around. People ordering stuff with that direct debit payment, then reverse the payment after five weeks. Then the merchant has to either sue them to get his money, or he can decide do just live with the loss and just black-list them as customers.