Do-not-call
list benefits some
By
Mandy Wright
On-line Forty-Niner
It's
10:30 p.m. and Renee Lemus has just settled
in for the night when the phone rings.
"Hello?"
"May
I speak to Linda?" comes the voice
on the other end.
"Who's
this?" Lemus asks, apprehensive at
being addressed by her seldom-used first
name. As the caller launches into a prepared
speech, Lemus shakes her head in disbelief.
A telemarketer is calling at 10:30 p.m.
Lemus,
a journalism major at Cal State Long Beach,
is among the millions of consumers who are
looking to the newly implemented National
Do Not Call Registry to prevent nightly
interruptions such as these. Like many others,
Lemus responds to telemarketing calls simply
by putting the phone down.
"I
feel bad, but we get so many," she
said. "It's not worth it. They're going
to give their whole shpiel and I'm going
to say no, so I might as well just hang
up."
Lemus
is not alone. The registry was initially
proposed in December 2002 as part of the
Federal Trade Commission's amended Telemarketing
Sales Rule, in response to mounting pressure
on both the FTC and the Federal Communications
Commission to impose harsher restrictions
on telemarketers. The registry began being
officially enforced on Oct. 11, after the
U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned
a decision by a Colorado court that declared
the registry a violation of First Amendment
rights.
Consumers
who register their name and phone number
on the list will no longer receive calls
from most telemarketers after three months.
Telemarketing companies are required to
compare their own list of prohibited phone
numbers against the registry, or "scrub"
their list, at least every 90 days. Those
who don't, or who call consumers anyway,
can be fined up to $11, 000.
Since
telemarketing is defined by the FCC as "the
initiation of a telephone call or message
for the purpose of encouraging the purchase
or rental of, or investment in, property,
goods, or services," charities and
other non-profit organizations are not required
to honor the list, which means that members
of the registry can expect a reduced number
of nightly phone calls, but not an elimination
of them altogether.
Many
states already have their own do not call
lists, which will be transferred over to
the national registry automatically. For
California, which had no such list, the
national registry will double as the state
list as well.
Although
many Californians feel the registry is the
answer to their prayers, not everyone is
pleased. Event planning major Ginger Calmer,
19, had to quit her job as a telemarketer
for Trend West Resorts as a result of the
registry.
"The
first day it passed, we were making calls
at like 12, and booked [customers] to come
in and watch the timeshare videos and get
their gifts," Calmer said. "We
would call back to confirm later on in the
day, and all of a sudden you couldn't get
ahold of them."
Once
the list started being enforced, Calmer
received an error message when she tried
to contact many of the phone numbers on
her list.
"We
lost a lot of money that day just because
of that, and now I would say for every 10
people we try to call, at least three or
four of them are blocked," Calmer said.
"I don't hassle people, and all of
a sudden I can't make enough money to work
there, and I have to get a different job."
Many
businesses, especially those who provide
telemarketing services, are also wary of
the new regulation. Even telemarketing companies
who call business to business, rather than
business to consumer, are impacted.
"We
do have a few programs that we had to let
a few people go--we also have programs where
we scrub the list," said Craig Larkins,
a specialist for Unicall International Inc.,
a business-to-business telemarketing company
based in Ohio.
Rich
Madzel, owner of Custom Telemarketing Services
in New York, which also makes business-to-business
calls, feels that the registry is a faulty
approach to a legitimate problem.
"On
the surface it's good--the telemaketing
industy has failed miserably in policing
itself," Madzel said. "But this
is the wrong way to fix this problem. There
are other ways."
Although
Madzel has put himself on the list, he realizes
that the regulation will put many at a disadvantage
who rely on telemarketing for flexible hours.
"Many
people in the telemarketing business are
not employable elsewhere," he said.
"The telemarketing agency lends itself
to flex hours--how many businesses can do
that?"
Calmer
also feels that the registry most impacts
the employees of telemarketing companies
who have a hard time finding work elsewhere.
"People
aren't calling you because they enjoy calling
random people to try to sell them stuff
they don't need," she said. "People
are calling you because they either need
to put themselves through school and they
don't have the experience to do anything
else yet, or they're trying to support a
family and it's one of the only jobs that
you can get that works from 5 to 9."
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