| Comment Number: | OL-103115 |
| Received: | 11/28/2004 7:41:11 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Nathan Kleger |
| State: | NY |
| 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 am strongly against this proposed amendment to 'allow telemarketing calls that deliver a prerecorded message to consumers with whom the seller on whose behalf the calls are made has an established business relationship'. 1. 'established business relationship' will be horribly abused. If I had a subscription to a magazine five years ago should I have to listen to recorded drivel from Joe's PhoneAdsAreUS calling on behalf of the publisher asking me to sign up again? No, I shouldn’t. How many different ‘sellers’ do we do business with over the course of a few years? Hundreds? 2. It would make it significantly harder to notify a company with which I have had an established business relationship that I do not wish them to call me. If a human calls me with a sales call in regards to an established business relationship I can interrupt them on the spot and tell them to put me on a do not call list in their company right then. If a machine calls me I have to call the company back on my time and effort during their hours and jump through their hoops to get put on their do not call list. 3. It will be much cheaper for companies to have automated machines dialing me to leave a sales message than it would be to have humans do it, thereby potentially enabling a vastly higher rate of such calls. This could lead to clogging our answering machines with phone spam, much as our email systems now are clogged with email spam. 4. It transfers more of the cost of advertising from the company to the consumer, just like UCE (spam email) because it makes each call cheaper for the seller and more expensive for the consumer. This is advertising that would be coming to me, inside my house over the phone lines that I pay for, through the phone that I pay for, using my electricity for my answering machine, taking up my time, on their schedule, and without prior approval from me. Should I have to conceivably listen to messages from each one of the hundreds of companies that I may do business with over a few years time, and then call them all back to tell them that I don’t wish to receive recorded messages from each of them? I am sick of legally protected advertising that transfers the cost of the advertising from the advertiser to the consumer; e.g. fax ads and UCE(spam). Do not provide more avenues for sellers to advertise to us in our homes and businesses, using our resources, against our will. Do not pass this amendment. Sincerely, Nathan Kleger