| Comment Number: | OL-103273 |
| Received: | 11/28/2004 9:45:21 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Scott Beinhower |
| State: | PA |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
This is the worst of all possible amendments. Automated phone spam is already the most abusive, as it usually grabs the phone line and won't let go until it's done with its spiel. This wastes my time if I happen to answer the line, and wastes the limited space on my answering machine tape if it picks up. Plus in my experience, automated phone spam is the MOST likely to not have a valid way to get off the list. Oh, sure, it may give you an 800 number to call, but that's likely to reach some convoluted voicemail system that never gets you anywhere. And the concept of "prior contact" has already been stretched to mean "and everyone our company ever shares marketing information with". Not only that, but the upshot WILL be that telemarketers uniformly go to an automated model (much cheaper for them, much more annoying for us). The thing I don't like about this new change is that, yes, there is already an exception for the pre-existing business relationship. If a company calls me now, I can tell the person who called "put me on your do not call list," and they won't bug me anymore. However, my gripe about pre-recorded messages is it puts the burden on the consumer to get off the list -- you have to call the company that just called you back, then get a person on the phone and get them to remove you from their list. It just makes it that much harder for consumers to deal with, and that much easier for the companies bugging them. Banks of computers are a lot cheaper than banks of people, when traversing a list of millions of phone numbers... This is a very bad idea and just shows who the government is truly working for....corporations and not the good old tax paying individual. PLEASE don't let this go through. KEEP "Do Not Call" a REAL prohibition against junk calls.