Comment Number: OL-100890
Received: 11/27/2004 3:11:57 PM
Organization:
Commenter: Marcus Rogge
State: SD
Subject: Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 310
No Attachments

Comments:

I beg you, PLEASE do not allow this change to happen. I am a subscriber to the Do Not Call Registry. I subscribed to the registry as soon as it came out, as I was constantly harrassed by telemarketers. Every night, I would come home, and three, four, five calls a night would be on my phone, my voice mail, my caller ID. They'd just keep trying me back, again and again, until I would tell them to leave me alone. Then, they'd call back again in a week or two. Seriously, I'm not making this up. Next to Spam and Popup Ads and Spyware, this is the most ANNOYING form a company can possibly do to try to market their products or services. I used to think Junk Mail was awful. This is much WORSE, and far more annoying. I have friends from around the country, and their ID doesn't always show up, so I can't just NOT answer the phone. I just hate being in the middle of something, or having a nice evening after a hard day full of work and stress, or a meal with friends interrupted by some blowhard who goes on and on about their product or service. You can't shut them up long enough to explain to them you already have what they are offering, and you don't want any more. With prerecorded messages, you can't even tell them not to call back. During the most recent election, even though I'm on the DO NOT CALL list, I received at least one to two calls per evening from one campaign or another. Even more often, throughout the day and evening, I would receive multiple prerecorded phone calls, telling me how one candidate or another was the better. I got SO SICK of it, I even hung up on Liddy Dole, and I LOVE her! Did I vote? You bet I did! Do I want to have people calling me at ALL hours? NO!!!! For gosh sake, there ought to be at least ONE place on this earth you can be free from being marketed to if you want to be, and it ought to be in the SUPPOSED PRIVACY of your own HOME. PLEASE, let the American public have some PEACE. There is a place for marketing, and it is fine to have ads in places where, IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING, it is found right there. But IF YOU DON'T want to have things shoved into your home, you should be able to tell them to leave you alone. After all, what's next, the return of Door-to-Door selling? Talk about annoying. These people came to our neighborhood all summer long and tried to sell us dishwashing soap in generic bottles to wash our cars with. They even stepped into the garage without permission and put it on the car. I almost considered breaking the law to get this annoying creature to leave. Our neighborhood, as a group, finally told them to get out, and don't come back, but that happens every summer too, with a new group of people. We are planning to incorporate our town, so that we can make rules to keep them out of our neighborhood, as well. Thank you for your time, and for giving thought to my comments.