| Comment Number: | OL-104984 |
| Received: | 11/30/2004 8:49:56 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Ronald Heiby |
| State: | IL |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
[Note: It appears that the comment software eliminates the blank lines that I attempted to include, to indicate the start of a new paragraph. So, I will use the three characters "PPP" to indicate a paragraph break.] PPP This comment is in opposition to the proposal to allow the delivery of prerecorded messages. PPP The "Do Not Call List" appears to be one of the most popular government programs in recent memory. This proposal seeks to destroy much of its benefit. I would imagine that the percentage of US citizens who actually want to receive pre-recorded commercial messages to be vanishingly small. PPP With a pre-recorded message, the callee has no opportunity to request that the caller stop talking and add the number to that firm's don't call list. I expect that the information on how to "opt out" of such messages will be found only at the end of the prerecorded message, and probably spoken very quickly. It will likely require the callee to take extra time to call or write to request that the calls stop. This is not an improvement. PPP I pay for my phone service. I do so to because the phone is *my* tool. I do not pay for phone service so that it can be a marketing tool for businesses trying to convince me to buy their product. PPP I already need to deal with dozens of SPAM Email messages per day. Fortunately, the technology exists to help me do that with some degree of automation, such that I need to personally check on only a handful of questionable messages. No such technology for filtering out SPAM phone messages exists. What do I do with 50 phone messages per day, each a minute long? Do I need to allocate an hour a day to listening to and deleting phone SPAM? I don't think so. Before that happens, I'll set my voice mail system to refuse to record messages, and set my outgoing message to indicate why. If one of my phone providers won't let me set to refuse messages, I'll simply cancel that voice mail. PPP Perhaps the goal of this proposal is to get folks writing letters to each other again? It's a laudable goal, but a questionable method. PPP Thank you for your attention.