| Comment Number: | OL-105370 |
| Received: | 12/1/2004 10:26:52 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | MacDonald |
| State: | VA |
| Subject: | Trade Regulation Rule on Telemarketing Sales |
| Title: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| CFR Citation: | 16 CFR Part 310 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
The Do Not Call Registry maintains a basic right of privacy! DO NOT ALTER OR WEAKEN IT! We are NOT in favor of allowing telemarketing messages, pre-recorded or not, into our home, not even from firms with whom we may have had or currently have a business relationship. Our home is our private sanctuary. No one, unless specifically invited, has the right to intrude. That most definitely includes unwanted callers at the door and unwanted phone calls. Look at it this way, the phone in almost every home comes into the bedroom. Would you allow a stranger into your bedroom uninvited? The phone in a private home is not a public vehicle for solicitation. Companies insulate themselves from contact with the public and their customers through increasingly complex layers of electonic responses and menus. It is very hard to actually speak with a person to solve a legitimate problem or express a legitimate concern. If a company (under the guise of cost concerns) does not want to be bothered by individuals or calls, why would you think a private citizen would want to have their private time in their own home intruded upon? A private citizen should not have to go through the expense, frustration, and time to install the same electonic wall of insulation just to maintain their privacy and peace in their own home. It is a right of a business to provide their services. It is their right to openly advertise in public ways. It is not their right to intrude that advertising unasked over a phone or at the door of a private home. Again, that phone comes into our bedrooms, so to speak. No one has the right to come into our bedroom unasked. The phone in our home is provided by a company, but it is for private use. We pay for its use for our private purposes. If we want additional information from the company providing that service, or any other company, it should only be at our request. We should not have to opt out, it should be our right to opt in. Advertising comes to our mailbox. We pick it up when we choose. We sort through it on our schedule. It does not jangle loudly, interrupt our dinner, or our sleep, or invited guests in our home. While it takes time, it is not as offensive and interruptive to one's private life as a phone call. Please consider these issues and do not give away more of our privacy than has already been lost. Sincerely, Kathleen MacDonald