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Government Sanity Check #310
Telesales
Ray's Letter to the FTC
by Ray Strackbein
Yesterday, I wrote to you about telemarketers not identifying their company so I can keep a record of who I tell to "put me on the do-not-call list."
Loopholes
An additional abusive loophole telemarketers use here in Virginia is to have an automatic dialer pre-call.
I think Virginia prohibits initial sales pitches by automated phone dialers. For that reason, telemarketers don't deliver automated sales pitches. Instead, they appear to use an automated dialer to call and see if someone answers. If the autodialer auto-answers, the automated telemarketing system queues the telephone number to be re-dialed for a human sales-pitch delivery.
Because automated pitch delivery is prohibited, I now have to rush to answer the telephone twice and am interrupted and annoyed not by just one call, but two. Neither call displays caller ID information.
Anonymous telemarketers
I am writing to you because my telephone rang 15 minutes ago showing no Caller ID info. When I answered and said "hello," the other end hung up. 10 minutes later, I received another
call with no caller ID information from Dun and Bradstreet.
Please at least require Caller ID name-and-number information on all calls. Require the telephone numbers to be "permanent" so that telemarketers do not use a new telephone number for one
day only.
I want to be able to track them for legal purposes, and I want to be able to actually dial that number and call them back and tell them not to call me. I want a real human to answer the number I call during normal telemarketing business hours. I also want "Caller Name" feature of Caller ID to be required and for the Callername to show the name of the parent telemarketing company, not "Red Cross" or "Police League." I also want the Caller ID Name to show either the word "telemarketing" or a standard, publicized, unique abbreviation. I want to be able to tell the telemarketing company to put me on their "do not call list" and have it apply to their entire telemarketing business, not just the branch, client, or DBA that is placing the call. When I say I want to be placed on the "Do Not Call List" I want that telemarketing company to be prohibited from sharing, selling, renting, or notifying anyone that that number even exists. I also want to be able to use the Caller ID information to telephone them back at some later period after the call and ask to be placed on their "do not call list."
I hope you can help me in this matter.
I will be happy to personally come to Washington DC and talk to anyone including staff or legislators. I would be happy to testify before a Congressional committee if necessary. I am serious. What should I do next?
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Let's do a sanity check on the telemarketing laws. We need to make telemarketers stop harassing people.
Copyright © Ray Strackbein
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