The Federal Trade Commission has implemented new rules banning those annoying recorded sales pitches.
The FTC amended its Telemarketing Sales Rule after reviewing more than 14,000 comments made since October 2006, when proposed amendments were published for public consideration.
There are two stages to the change: By December 2008, robocalls will be required to include an automated key-press or voice-activated opt-out. Beginning September 2009, telemarketers won’t be able to send out any robocalls without “the prior express written agreement of the recipient to receive such calls.”
I have long since stopped answering my home phone. I don’t even look to see who is calling. I don’t really think the FTC is going to stop the phone version of spam with these new rules. Telemarketing calls like these must get results or they would die a natural death. It’s a little scary to think that people out there are responding to the types of messages I sometimes hear on my answering machine.
While I understand that the FTC is trying to do something good for consumers they fall short, as government bureaucrats usually do.
There are no exceptions for telemarketers to send robocalls to customers with whom they have an “established business relationship,” as an earlier policy allowed, but there are some exceptions. Health care-related calls subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 are still allowed, as are charitable fundraising robocalls made to members of the nonprofit charitable organization for which the call is placed, or to people who previously donated to it. The fundraising calls must still include an automated opt-out, however.
The strict limits won’t stop robocalls from political campaigns, either.”Political calls are not placed for the purpose of inducing purchases of goods or services, and therefore are not ‘telemarketing’ within the meaning of the TSR,” the FTC notes in a footnote of the amendment.
All these well intentioned rules just end up making it more expensive to do business in America. Those expenses are always passed on to the consumer in the end.
What I would like to see happen is a true free market solution to robocalling. How about a system that responds to autmated calling systems with a massive EMP at the source? That would be a reasonable response to a devilishly annoying sales tactic. If automated telemarketers knew that they stood a good risk of being electronically executed for their annoying tactics they might think twice.