I would like to comment on the ineffectiveness of existing Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR).

Up until the past year or two, my family was always willing to answer calls from telemarketers. Invariably, though, we asked the telemarketers to take us off their calling lists and not call us again. We typically received a polite response.

During the past year or two, however, we have received calls from telemarketers unlike anything previous. Please consider:

(1) When we asked one company to take us off their list, the telemarketer just hung up the phone. Afterwards, we were unable to find a listing for the offending company.

(2) We have received RECORDED messages from telemarketers, which obviously don't allow us to ask that we be taken off the list.

(3) We've received calls from individuals speaking broken English who, when asked, said they had no idea how to take anybody off the list.

The calls from telemarketers have become so discourteous, and so reliably associated with disreputable products and services, that we no longer want to answer the calls at all. Because we receive quite a few calls from telemarketers, we've added a feature to our Bell Atlantic telephone service called "Do Not Disturb." This feature prevents ANY caller from reaching us without the secret access code. Although Do Not Disturb prevents all of the telemarketing calls, it also diminishes the general utility of our telephone. We miss the days before telemarketers when we could invite calls from the public; we feel that the rise of telemarketing has thus had a negative impact on our relations with the community at large.

I encourage the FTC to formulate a new TSR that would severely limit, if not outright prohibit, all telemarketing. I believe that the Freedom of Speech issue here is moot; my private home (and the telephones therein) are most certainly not part of the public domain in which Free Speech is rightfully protected.

Thank you kindly,

Mike Runnels